Justin Bieber, being a good Canadian, has dabbled in all manner of worthy causes. However, he has lacked that signature social justice issue that could take his brand to the next level. You know, a signature issue like Jerry Lewis had with muscular dystrophy, or Elizabeth Taylor had with AIDs research.
But that could be changing. Biebs is on fire over the new lids on Timmies take-out cups.
Right on! It's about time somebody addressed this outrage!
I've had a heart full of sorrow ever since those Brazilian hedgies took over our beloved Canadian coffee chain. First they took out the garbage bins at the drive-thru.
WTF?
Sure, they're happy enough to sell you stuff, but oh no, don't expect them to provide a garbage can for the refuse. You can either throw that out the car window or drop it into a municipal garbage bin in your local park. Either way, the Brazilians are off-loading responsibility for their garbage.
Then they took out the napkins when you buy a donut. They figure you can just lick your fingers and wipe them on the bag the donut came in. Doesn't sound like much, but selling two hundred donuts per hour across four thousand stores adds up to a lot of napkins. Some young Brazilian twat with an MBA bought himself a Porsche with the bonus he got for that insight.
And still there was no public outcry.
But now, the lids. They don't open properly when you fold the tab back. If you push the tab in you're looking at esoteric tongue manipulations to get at your coffee. They're stupid and they don't work.
This is a bridge too far.
Thank you, Justin, for calling them out on this!
Sunday, December 29, 2019
Trump and Putin have made the world safer for journalists - stats
Check out this editorial in the Toronto Star today. That's the Star's editorial board saluting press freedom.
The first four paragraphs make ominous reading. The dictatorial tyrant Putin and the leader of the free world have bonded over many things, we are told, "especially in their scorn for press freedoms."
It gets worse. The two tyrants shared a chuckle at the prospect of "getting rid" of those pesky truth-seekers in the press.
"Their menacing attitude imperils the lives of journalists..."
After that foreboding intro, the editorial board treats the reader to some facts that seem to point in the opposite direction. Deaths of working journalists plummeted 44% in 2019 over the previous year, and are at their lowest ebb in two decades.
Perhaps aware that their first four paragraphs are wishful thinking not supported by facts, they then indulge some sophistry in an attempt to convince the reader that a reduction in journo deaths bodes ill not only for press freedom, but for democracy itself!
"And most menacingly, there has been a two-per-cent increase in the number of journalists being murdered or targeted." Two percent of a sample of 49 dead journos would mean one journalist in the past year was deliberately targeted for their journalism.
One?
The diabolical scheming of the two tyrants notwithstanding, journalism obviously remains one of the safest professions, and editorial board hysteria aside, is getting even safer in the Trump-Putin era.
And they wonder why they are derided for "fake news."
The first four paragraphs make ominous reading. The dictatorial tyrant Putin and the leader of the free world have bonded over many things, we are told, "especially in their scorn for press freedoms."
It gets worse. The two tyrants shared a chuckle at the prospect of "getting rid" of those pesky truth-seekers in the press.
"Their menacing attitude imperils the lives of journalists..."
After that foreboding intro, the editorial board treats the reader to some facts that seem to point in the opposite direction. Deaths of working journalists plummeted 44% in 2019 over the previous year, and are at their lowest ebb in two decades.
Perhaps aware that their first four paragraphs are wishful thinking not supported by facts, they then indulge some sophistry in an attempt to convince the reader that a reduction in journo deaths bodes ill not only for press freedom, but for democracy itself!
"And most menacingly, there has been a two-per-cent increase in the number of journalists being murdered or targeted." Two percent of a sample of 49 dead journos would mean one journalist in the past year was deliberately targeted for their journalism.
One?
The diabolical scheming of the two tyrants notwithstanding, journalism obviously remains one of the safest professions, and editorial board hysteria aside, is getting even safer in the Trump-Putin era.
And they wonder why they are derided for "fake news."
Saturday, December 28, 2019
CBC runs infomercial, pretends it's news
Check out the latest iteration of this same-old story at CBC; A 'demographic tsunami' is about to make Canada's trucker shortage even worse.
That reads a lot like an infomercial for the Ontario Truck Driving School to my eye. That's an outfit that lures gullible young (and not so young) people, quite often recent immigrants, into its driver training programs, from which, after dropping eight to ten thousand dollars in tuition and other fees, they graduate into a poorly paid job with long hours and zero work-life balance.
Sure there are drivers making $70,000/year, but they more or less have to live in their rigs to do that. And forget about the Ontario Trucking Association doing anything about it. They're the employer lobby group largely responsible for turning truck-driving into a shit job in the first place.
The OTA figures the solution lies in bringing in foreign workers. That's a strategy premised on the belief that somewhere in the world, in some refugee camp in some shithole country we've destroyed, there must be folks desperate enough that a shitty job in Canada looks like manna from heaven.
It's a time-tested strategy. Look what happened in the meat-packing industry. Canadian icon Peter Pocklington led the charge with his lock-out of Gainers workers in '86. He generously offered his unionized workforce a 45% reduction in pay. Before that, meat-packing plants offered hard and unpleasant work at a decent wage. A job in a packing plant offered an opportunity to buy a home and educate your children.
After that, not so much. It didn't take long till most meat-packing jobs went to foreign workers willing to "do the jobs Canadians didn't want to do."
Of course they did! If you're starving to death in a refugee camp in Somalia, a slaughterhouse job at ten cents over minimum wage in Alberta looks like a pretty good deal. To this day, the backbone of the meat-packing industry workforce is made up of foreign workers.
It's a strategy that solved the labour shortage in meat-packing. There's no reason to think it won't solve the truck-driver shortage too.
The question should be, is this a strategy that's good for Canadian workers, or is it a strategy that benefits only company owners, at the expense of Canadian workers?
That reads a lot like an infomercial for the Ontario Truck Driving School to my eye. That's an outfit that lures gullible young (and not so young) people, quite often recent immigrants, into its driver training programs, from which, after dropping eight to ten thousand dollars in tuition and other fees, they graduate into a poorly paid job with long hours and zero work-life balance.
Sure there are drivers making $70,000/year, but they more or less have to live in their rigs to do that. And forget about the Ontario Trucking Association doing anything about it. They're the employer lobby group largely responsible for turning truck-driving into a shit job in the first place.
The OTA figures the solution lies in bringing in foreign workers. That's a strategy premised on the belief that somewhere in the world, in some refugee camp in some shithole country we've destroyed, there must be folks desperate enough that a shitty job in Canada looks like manna from heaven.
It's a time-tested strategy. Look what happened in the meat-packing industry. Canadian icon Peter Pocklington led the charge with his lock-out of Gainers workers in '86. He generously offered his unionized workforce a 45% reduction in pay. Before that, meat-packing plants offered hard and unpleasant work at a decent wage. A job in a packing plant offered an opportunity to buy a home and educate your children.
After that, not so much. It didn't take long till most meat-packing jobs went to foreign workers willing to "do the jobs Canadians didn't want to do."
Of course they did! If you're starving to death in a refugee camp in Somalia, a slaughterhouse job at ten cents over minimum wage in Alberta looks like a pretty good deal. To this day, the backbone of the meat-packing industry workforce is made up of foreign workers.
It's a strategy that solved the labour shortage in meat-packing. There's no reason to think it won't solve the truck-driver shortage too.
The question should be, is this a strategy that's good for Canadian workers, or is it a strategy that benefits only company owners, at the expense of Canadian workers?
Thursday, December 26, 2019
The Reinhart boys
Way back when I was coming up, and we're backing up forty or fifty years here, when I was coming up out there on the 86 Dragway, the Reinhart boys were coming up one concession over.
Jamie was a couple years older than me. I remember him sitting a couple barstools down from me at The Chooch one night. I was playing my harmonica. Jamie takes up a collection and comes and dumps a handful of change in front of me.
"That's yours if you stop playing that fucking thing," he says.
That was good enough for me. Jamie was reputed to have biker connections. There was enough there for two beers.
That was my first paying gig.
Jamie had the most awesome 68 Mustang that he'd rip down the 86 Dragway once in awhile.
With open headers. You'd hear him fire it up one concession over, and then you could track his progress coming down the Marden-Maryhill road. Word was that Mustang had been raced in NHRA Super Stock by Barry Poole the year before, but that may have just been hearsay.
But it was one fabulous car.
Jamie's younger brother Carl was making quite a name for himself in Junior Hockey circles at the time. We all figured he was heading for the bigs. I was actually on the ice with him once. I think it was a pick-up game among the Ariss locals and somebody invited me along.
There used to be a after-hours joint near Ariss called the Boar House. It was what they might have called a speakeasy in a previous generation. I was only there a couple of times but a lot of the local aristocracy attended there regularly.
Like the Reinhart boys.
At the end of the day, Carl never quite made the bigs. But there was a younger brother, Paul. I don't even recall having a beer with him at the Boar House.
But Paul actually made the big leagues! Played for the Flames and, if I'm not mistaken, scored a Stanley Cup ring along the way! Then he went into management. For all I know he might still be in a front office job somewhere.
A farm kid from one concession over.
Local boy makes good!
Jamie was a couple years older than me. I remember him sitting a couple barstools down from me at The Chooch one night. I was playing my harmonica. Jamie takes up a collection and comes and dumps a handful of change in front of me.
"That's yours if you stop playing that fucking thing," he says.
That was good enough for me. Jamie was reputed to have biker connections. There was enough there for two beers.
That was my first paying gig.
Jamie had the most awesome 68 Mustang that he'd rip down the 86 Dragway once in awhile.
With open headers. You'd hear him fire it up one concession over, and then you could track his progress coming down the Marden-Maryhill road. Word was that Mustang had been raced in NHRA Super Stock by Barry Poole the year before, but that may have just been hearsay.
But it was one fabulous car.
Jamie's younger brother Carl was making quite a name for himself in Junior Hockey circles at the time. We all figured he was heading for the bigs. I was actually on the ice with him once. I think it was a pick-up game among the Ariss locals and somebody invited me along.
There used to be a after-hours joint near Ariss called the Boar House. It was what they might have called a speakeasy in a previous generation. I was only there a couple of times but a lot of the local aristocracy attended there regularly.
Like the Reinhart boys.
At the end of the day, Carl never quite made the bigs. But there was a younger brother, Paul. I don't even recall having a beer with him at the Boar House.
But Paul actually made the big leagues! Played for the Flames and, if I'm not mistaken, scored a Stanley Cup ring along the way! Then he went into management. For all I know he might still be in a front office job somewhere.
A farm kid from one concession over.
Local boy makes good!
Freeland's world
Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are both disciplined, dogged millionaires who describe their more popular wives as their better halves, hold degrees from Harvard Law School, and have a preference for data-driven arguments rather than emotional ones. Both men struggle to connect with the grassroots of their parties, coming across as cold and robotic.
That's a taste of Chrystia Freeland's analytical prowess from her 2012 book, "Plutocrats; the rise of the new global super-rich and the fall of everyone else." I'd never read it, but Santa was kind enough to drop off a copy yesterday.
Written a couple of years before being recruited by Team Trudeau's Liberals, the book gives some insights into the life of our now Deputy Prime Minister. Chrystia was a busy gal back in her journo days. There's a couple of thousand billionaires loose on planet earth, and she name-drops most of them here. They're mostly hard-working folks who built their own fortunes. They just happened to have the right skill-sets to surf the revolutionary wave of algorithms, AI, and automated trading that define the modern era.
It's a slow day when Chrystia isn't having breakfast with a billionaire CEO or lunch with a Silicon Valley billionaire or dinner with a billionaire Russian oligarch or moderating an expert panel of billionaires at Davos.
She loves billionaires and they love her back. In her acknowledgements she informs the reader that "many members of the global super-elite have helped me to understand their world and some have become friends." There follows a list of a dozen of her billionaire friends, starting with George Soros.
Maybe that explains why her book doesn't have much of a critical perspective. Billionaires are just nice folks who are really smart and well-educated and happen to have a lot of money. Nothing to see here, folks.
Having followed Chrystia's political career for a few years, she strikes me as a lightweight, in over her head. That was especially obvious in the Global Affairs portfolio. That's not a surprise when you consider her superficial comparison of Barry and Mittens above.
Romney was a seasoned slash-and-burn hedgie with at least hundreds of millions worth of assets. Obama was a college professor who barely squeaked into millionaire territory on the strength of a book deal. Painting both as "dogged millionaires" is silly and dishonest. So is the claim that both were cold and robotic. Romney, maybe. Obama, not so much.
Nowhere does she suggest that billionaires are a threat to democracy. In the USA, it's fair to say that the billionaire class has more or less bought the political system, lock, stock, and barrel. In Canada we're running a little behind, but it'll take a concerted effort to avoid ending up in the same dismal place.
Don't expect Chrystia Freeland to be part of that effort.
That's a taste of Chrystia Freeland's analytical prowess from her 2012 book, "Plutocrats; the rise of the new global super-rich and the fall of everyone else." I'd never read it, but Santa was kind enough to drop off a copy yesterday.
Written a couple of years before being recruited by Team Trudeau's Liberals, the book gives some insights into the life of our now Deputy Prime Minister. Chrystia was a busy gal back in her journo days. There's a couple of thousand billionaires loose on planet earth, and she name-drops most of them here. They're mostly hard-working folks who built their own fortunes. They just happened to have the right skill-sets to surf the revolutionary wave of algorithms, AI, and automated trading that define the modern era.
It's a slow day when Chrystia isn't having breakfast with a billionaire CEO or lunch with a Silicon Valley billionaire or dinner with a billionaire Russian oligarch or moderating an expert panel of billionaires at Davos.
She loves billionaires and they love her back. In her acknowledgements she informs the reader that "many members of the global super-elite have helped me to understand their world and some have become friends." There follows a list of a dozen of her billionaire friends, starting with George Soros.
Maybe that explains why her book doesn't have much of a critical perspective. Billionaires are just nice folks who are really smart and well-educated and happen to have a lot of money. Nothing to see here, folks.
Having followed Chrystia's political career for a few years, she strikes me as a lightweight, in over her head. That was especially obvious in the Global Affairs portfolio. That's not a surprise when you consider her superficial comparison of Barry and Mittens above.
Romney was a seasoned slash-and-burn hedgie with at least hundreds of millions worth of assets. Obama was a college professor who barely squeaked into millionaire territory on the strength of a book deal. Painting both as "dogged millionaires" is silly and dishonest. So is the claim that both were cold and robotic. Romney, maybe. Obama, not so much.
Nowhere does she suggest that billionaires are a threat to democracy. In the USA, it's fair to say that the billionaire class has more or less bought the political system, lock, stock, and barrel. In Canada we're running a little behind, but it'll take a concerted effort to avoid ending up in the same dismal place.
Don't expect Chrystia Freeland to be part of that effort.
Monday, December 23, 2019
Locker room talk
I thought both Trump and the media lowered the decorum bar with that entire grab-em-by-the-pussy business.
But the story did seem to facilitate a general coarsening of discourse. Perhaps that's what led Jeremy Roenick to conclude that putting his own locker room fantasy life in a podcast was a good plan.
It wasn't.
Roenick had a pretty good run at the top level and probably has a few millions to tide him over the jobless bump.
Wonder what Don Cherry would say?
But the story did seem to facilitate a general coarsening of discourse. Perhaps that's what led Jeremy Roenick to conclude that putting his own locker room fantasy life in a podcast was a good plan.
It wasn't.
Roenick had a pretty good run at the top level and probably has a few millions to tide him over the jobless bump.
Wonder what Don Cherry would say?
Sunday, December 22, 2019
Happy Pontiac Solstice
If I'm not mistaken, yesterday was the winter solstice. That used to be a big fat winter holiday back in pagan times, but then the Christians took it over and called it "Christmas."
My old pal Robert even sent me a solstice greeting.
Thanks!
Robert does some nice stuff. He deserves more recognition.
Very next day, my other old pal, Kipling, calls me up with a yarn that is so bent you know I couldn't make it up.
He was gonna surprise his long-suffering wife with a new car for Christmas. He'd found a vintage Pontiac Solstice he was sure she always wanted. If you're like me, and said " a what?," this is what they look like;
Kinda reminds me of the time Dad got my Mom a new chainsaw for her birthday, but whatever...
With Kipling, of course, life can never adhere to the script you imagined for it. He's in Kitchener, the car is in Cornwall, he's got the whole deal done and just has to pick up the car.
So he hooks up his tow dolly and heads up the 401.
Gets to Cornwall, where his wife's bought-and-paid-for Solstice is waiting, and guess what! The Solstice doesn't fit on the tow dolly!
Which, among other things, underscores the importance of a good grounding in basic math.
Dude, did it not occur to your pot-addled brain to measure the car and make sure it would fit on the dolly BEFORE you drove to Cornwall?
Anyway, he called to scrub our breakfast at the Teviotdale Truck Stop tomorrow. He'll still be in Cornwall figuring out how to get two vehicles back to Kitchener with one driver.
I would have offered to help you out pal, but I just burned one...
Happy Pontiac Solstice to all!
My old pal Robert even sent me a solstice greeting.
Thanks!
Robert does some nice stuff. He deserves more recognition.
Very next day, my other old pal, Kipling, calls me up with a yarn that is so bent you know I couldn't make it up.
He was gonna surprise his long-suffering wife with a new car for Christmas. He'd found a vintage Pontiac Solstice he was sure she always wanted. If you're like me, and said " a what?," this is what they look like;
Kinda reminds me of the time Dad got my Mom a new chainsaw for her birthday, but whatever...
With Kipling, of course, life can never adhere to the script you imagined for it. He's in Kitchener, the car is in Cornwall, he's got the whole deal done and just has to pick up the car.
So he hooks up his tow dolly and heads up the 401.
Gets to Cornwall, where his wife's bought-and-paid-for Solstice is waiting, and guess what! The Solstice doesn't fit on the tow dolly!
Which, among other things, underscores the importance of a good grounding in basic math.
Dude, did it not occur to your pot-addled brain to measure the car and make sure it would fit on the dolly BEFORE you drove to Cornwall?
Anyway, he called to scrub our breakfast at the Teviotdale Truck Stop tomorrow. He'll still be in Cornwall figuring out how to get two vehicles back to Kitchener with one driver.
I would have offered to help you out pal, but I just burned one...
Happy Pontiac Solstice to all!
Washington Capitals star Joel Ward spoke out about racism in hockey years ago
It took one tweet from never-quite-made-it NHLer Akim Aliu to shine a light on racism in hockey.
Joel Ward actually had a half-decent career in the NHL. And while he was never a "star," he certainly had a starring moment in that Boston series.
Joel passed through Owen Sound as he was coming up, and I had occasion to chat with him now and then. Quite a well-rounded young man by my estimation.
There may be folks who want to dismiss Aliu as a case of sour grapes; he never quite made it, so he blames racism.
Joel made it, and here's what he was saying about racism in the NHL years ago.
https://www.nhl.com/news/washington-capitals-left-winger-joel-ward-deals-with-racist-tweet/c-629915
There's nothing new about racism in hockey.
On the other hand, hockey likely isn't any more racist than the society it's a part of.
Joel Ward actually had a half-decent career in the NHL. And while he was never a "star," he certainly had a starring moment in that Boston series.
Joel passed through Owen Sound as he was coming up, and I had occasion to chat with him now and then. Quite a well-rounded young man by my estimation.
There may be folks who want to dismiss Aliu as a case of sour grapes; he never quite made it, so he blames racism.
Joel made it, and here's what he was saying about racism in the NHL years ago.
https://www.nhl.com/news/washington-capitals-left-winger-joel-ward-deals-with-racist-tweet/c-629915
There's nothing new about racism in hockey.
On the other hand, hockey likely isn't any more racist than the society it's a part of.
Canada flirts with fascism
There's a reason you don't see news coverage of popular protests in France and Chile in Canadian mainstream media. The powers that be wouldn't want the rabble to get any ideas.
As in France and Chile, ordinary paycheque-to-paycheque working Canadians are steadily seeing their standard of living erode. The Trudeau government does a good job of hiding its reactionary essence beneath a patina of progressive rhetoric, which has thus far succeeded in fooling most of the people most of the time, but for how much longer?
The federal government seems to have made peace with Quebec's blatantly racist Bill 21. We're keen on calling out human rights violations in Venezuela or China, but we wouldn't want to offend Quebec.
Trudeau can't apologize enough for Canada's history of genocidal treatment of native people. The concept of "nation-to-nation" negotiations gets lots of lip service but doesn't happen. Trudeau's government is determined to force both the Coastal GasLink and the TransCanada bitumen pipelines through unceded native land, native sovereignty be damned.
Just how determined was revealed in this Guardian headline the other day; Canada police prepared to shoot Indigenous activists. Of course they are; we've done it before, and, Trudeau's crocodile tears aside, we'll do it again if we have to.
Whether we "have to" or not will be determined by the level of resistance to these egregious violations of native sovereignty. The Trudeau government is 100% working for the corporate interests who will benefit from those pipelines, not for the Indians, not for the population at large, and not for the environment.
Token protests will be permitted. We do enjoy free speech in this country, after all. However, anyone who takes things too far will have the opportunity to explain themselves to an RCMP sniper.
As in France and Chile, ordinary paycheque-to-paycheque working Canadians are steadily seeing their standard of living erode. The Trudeau government does a good job of hiding its reactionary essence beneath a patina of progressive rhetoric, which has thus far succeeded in fooling most of the people most of the time, but for how much longer?
The federal government seems to have made peace with Quebec's blatantly racist Bill 21. We're keen on calling out human rights violations in Venezuela or China, but we wouldn't want to offend Quebec.
Trudeau can't apologize enough for Canada's history of genocidal treatment of native people. The concept of "nation-to-nation" negotiations gets lots of lip service but doesn't happen. Trudeau's government is determined to force both the Coastal GasLink and the TransCanada bitumen pipelines through unceded native land, native sovereignty be damned.
Just how determined was revealed in this Guardian headline the other day; Canada police prepared to shoot Indigenous activists. Of course they are; we've done it before, and, Trudeau's crocodile tears aside, we'll do it again if we have to.
Whether we "have to" or not will be determined by the level of resistance to these egregious violations of native sovereignty. The Trudeau government is 100% working for the corporate interests who will benefit from those pipelines, not for the Indians, not for the population at large, and not for the environment.
Token protests will be permitted. We do enjoy free speech in this country, after all. However, anyone who takes things too far will have the opportunity to explain themselves to an RCMP sniper.
Saturday, December 21, 2019
Why I'm more comfortable in old houses
Because I'm old?.. ha ha...
This will be a little self indulgent, but it's my blog. If you're hoping for some insights into global geo-politics, might as well skip this one.
When my folks arrived on these shores in '56 we started at the bottom. My father's first job in Canada was shovelling coal at the Kloepfer Coal Company. With a hand shovel.
That was when coal was still the number one home heating fuel, not yet eclipsed by furnace oil. Just to frame it for you, the milkman still came by in a horse-drawn chariot in those days.
After the coal-shovelling gig Dad got on delivering lumber for Stewart Lumber. That's another iconic Guelph brand that has gone the way of Kloepfer Coal and so many others.
There used to be an outfit called J.P. Hammill and Sons, which made denim jeans. They made them right there in Guelph back in the day.
That was the pre-free-trade era, obviously.
After a brief spell in the lumber truck, Dad got on at a factory. Omark. They made saw-chains for chain-saws.
In the overall scheme of things Omark was a rung below the top-tier industrial plants in Guelph at the time, but several rungs above J.P. Hammill and the like. Back in the day, every immigrant (and everybody else too) understood the concept of rungs.
Dad held that Omark job for ten years. I know that because I recall he got a watch from the company for ten years of service. A half-decent watch, I might add. Couple of rungs above a Timex, for sure.
During those years we lived in a succession of old fixer-uppers, on Neeve Street, Derry Street, and eventually in Elora, first house on the wrong side of the tracks as you're going into town, except the tracks aren't there anymore.
Those were all houses that had challenges, but they were also houses where I felt safe, comfortable, and happy. Life was simple, and simple comforts were all you needed.
The experts who get paid to study this stuff say that your personality is pretty much fixed during the first five years of your life. What you became then is what you're always gonna be.
Till I was eleven or twelve years old Dad went to work in a factory. It never occurred to me to aspire to anything other than one of the top-rung jobs in the factory.
Then Dad, not long after he got that watch, got a real estate license, and that sort of kicked the entire rung system off its moorings.
Elora was the greatest place. In a winter storm we'd get snow-drifts in the kitchen. One Sunday Mom accidentally killed a mouse that happened to be scurrying by the door as we got home from church. Got squished between the floor and the bottom of the door.
But I was happy there.
That's why I'm more comfortable in old houses.
This will be a little self indulgent, but it's my blog. If you're hoping for some insights into global geo-politics, might as well skip this one.
When my folks arrived on these shores in '56 we started at the bottom. My father's first job in Canada was shovelling coal at the Kloepfer Coal Company. With a hand shovel.
That was when coal was still the number one home heating fuel, not yet eclipsed by furnace oil. Just to frame it for you, the milkman still came by in a horse-drawn chariot in those days.
After the coal-shovelling gig Dad got on delivering lumber for Stewart Lumber. That's another iconic Guelph brand that has gone the way of Kloepfer Coal and so many others.
There used to be an outfit called J.P. Hammill and Sons, which made denim jeans. They made them right there in Guelph back in the day.
That was the pre-free-trade era, obviously.
After a brief spell in the lumber truck, Dad got on at a factory. Omark. They made saw-chains for chain-saws.
In the overall scheme of things Omark was a rung below the top-tier industrial plants in Guelph at the time, but several rungs above J.P. Hammill and the like. Back in the day, every immigrant (and everybody else too) understood the concept of rungs.
Dad held that Omark job for ten years. I know that because I recall he got a watch from the company for ten years of service. A half-decent watch, I might add. Couple of rungs above a Timex, for sure.
During those years we lived in a succession of old fixer-uppers, on Neeve Street, Derry Street, and eventually in Elora, first house on the wrong side of the tracks as you're going into town, except the tracks aren't there anymore.
Those were all houses that had challenges, but they were also houses where I felt safe, comfortable, and happy. Life was simple, and simple comforts were all you needed.
The experts who get paid to study this stuff say that your personality is pretty much fixed during the first five years of your life. What you became then is what you're always gonna be.
Till I was eleven or twelve years old Dad went to work in a factory. It never occurred to me to aspire to anything other than one of the top-rung jobs in the factory.
Then Dad, not long after he got that watch, got a real estate license, and that sort of kicked the entire rung system off its moorings.
Elora was the greatest place. In a winter storm we'd get snow-drifts in the kitchen. One Sunday Mom accidentally killed a mouse that happened to be scurrying by the door as we got home from church. Got squished between the floor and the bottom of the door.
But I was happy there.
That's why I'm more comfortable in old houses.
Bring back Baird!
A country's foreign minister is the most high-profile personality to represent their nation on the world stage, after the prime minister or president. That's why you want somebody in the role who brings a little zenf to the table.
I thought Bullshittin' John Baird managed that in spades. I didn't agree with him very often but he was impossible to ignore. He was also a breath of fresh air among the stodgy band of fundamentalist Christians Harper surrounded himself with. It was sad to see him walk away from politics when he announced that he was transitioning to the private sector for the "stuff-my-pockets" phase of his career.
There can't be a lot of Canadians who could name the two FMs we had between Baird and Chrystia. Those guys had serious zenf deficits.
Then Chrystia. You always got the sense that she was more about promoting her personal brand and ingratiating herself with the Trump administration. Sometimes these two goals worked at cross-purposes. It's tough to pretend you're tough on Saudi's human rights record while simultaneously selling them military tools that enable them to further oppress dissent.
In practical terms she wasn't much of a FM. Where are the wins? Venezuela? Ukraine? But generally speaking the media gave her a pass for a record that had far more errors than home runs.
Now we've got another dullard in the job who looks like he's going to advance Canada's role in the world by sucking up to Washington. Check out this story at CBC. That's got a bit of a huffy tone, eh? You almost figure maybe this guy is gonna bring the zenf!
But check out the sub-head; "Ottawa is the only one qualified to set Canada's foreign policy, says Francois-Philippe Champagne." He's responding to some snippy comments made by China's new ambassador to Canada on the topic of the two Michaels. Our latest laughable strategy is to prevail on Trump (that is, beg him) to intervene on our behalf.
Because, as you know, we're all about the rule of law, just like the Americans! They sent us a warrant to arrest Meng Wanzhou, and we're either about rule of law or we're not, so we had no choice but to do the right thing, the thing the Americans demanded we do, and if the Americans demanded it, it was obviously right...
As is typical in Canadian reporting on the matter, Elise von Scheel neglects to provide the context for Wanzhou's arrest. The Chinese national was allegedly in violation of some unilateral sanctions the US has arbitrarily and illegally imposed on Iran.
That's what we're talking about when we talk about "rule of law;" going along with illegal sanctions the Americans made up to bully Iran. How is it America's job to decide who China can or cannot do business with?
I thought Bullshittin' John Baird managed that in spades. I didn't agree with him very often but he was impossible to ignore. He was also a breath of fresh air among the stodgy band of fundamentalist Christians Harper surrounded himself with. It was sad to see him walk away from politics when he announced that he was transitioning to the private sector for the "stuff-my-pockets" phase of his career.
There can't be a lot of Canadians who could name the two FMs we had between Baird and Chrystia. Those guys had serious zenf deficits.
Then Chrystia. You always got the sense that she was more about promoting her personal brand and ingratiating herself with the Trump administration. Sometimes these two goals worked at cross-purposes. It's tough to pretend you're tough on Saudi's human rights record while simultaneously selling them military tools that enable them to further oppress dissent.
In practical terms she wasn't much of a FM. Where are the wins? Venezuela? Ukraine? But generally speaking the media gave her a pass for a record that had far more errors than home runs.
Now we've got another dullard in the job who looks like he's going to advance Canada's role in the world by sucking up to Washington. Check out this story at CBC. That's got a bit of a huffy tone, eh? You almost figure maybe this guy is gonna bring the zenf!
But check out the sub-head; "Ottawa is the only one qualified to set Canada's foreign policy, says Francois-Philippe Champagne." He's responding to some snippy comments made by China's new ambassador to Canada on the topic of the two Michaels. Our latest laughable strategy is to prevail on Trump (that is, beg him) to intervene on our behalf.
Because, as you know, we're all about the rule of law, just like the Americans! They sent us a warrant to arrest Meng Wanzhou, and we're either about rule of law or we're not, so we had no choice but to do the right thing, the thing the Americans demanded we do, and if the Americans demanded it, it was obviously right...
As is typical in Canadian reporting on the matter, Elise von Scheel neglects to provide the context for Wanzhou's arrest. The Chinese national was allegedly in violation of some unilateral sanctions the US has arbitrarily and illegally imposed on Iran.
That's what we're talking about when we talk about "rule of law;" going along with illegal sanctions the Americans made up to bully Iran. How is it America's job to decide who China can or cannot do business with?
American Exceptionalism now in outer space...
... cause if we don't fight Putin in outer space we'll be fighting him in Florida!
Donny J found time in his very busy schedule, between tweets and impeachment, to announce the latest US imbecility, the US Space Force. Maybe the Pentagon ran some focus groups and deduced that in this era of Star Wars do-overs, sequels, and prequels, a real life Space Force might find some traction.
That's been an infatuation among America's ruling class for some time. Reagan had a bee in his bonnet over it. "American values" have proved such a boon to the earthbound that it wouldn't be fair to galaxies far, far away if we didn't give them a chance to partake of their manifold blessings.
Like democracy and human rights and stuff...
Looks like a winner to me!
Donny J found time in his very busy schedule, between tweets and impeachment, to announce the latest US imbecility, the US Space Force. Maybe the Pentagon ran some focus groups and deduced that in this era of Star Wars do-overs, sequels, and prequels, a real life Space Force might find some traction.
That's been an infatuation among America's ruling class for some time. Reagan had a bee in his bonnet over it. "American values" have proved such a boon to the earthbound that it wouldn't be fair to galaxies far, far away if we didn't give them a chance to partake of their manifold blessings.
Like democracy and human rights and stuff...
Looks like a winner to me!
Friday, December 20, 2019
Do the Yanks still keep nukes at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey?
If they do, they're retarded.
Then again, the crisis within NATO is something to be applauded. NATO in its present post-soviet manifestation is, in the first place, irrelevant, and in the second, a non-stop provocation of Russia, all that's left of the former "Soviet Empire."
Not only that, but it takes a shit-load of money to keep this bureaucratic juggernaut afloat, which is why the allegedly NATO-hating Trump has been strong-arming the me-too club for more "defence" spending.
Erdogan knows it was his NATO "allies" who were behind the attempted regime-change event back in 2016. He's closer to Russia and Iran these days than he is to any NATO allies.
But he's still in the club!
Those are the kind of internal contradictions that will destroy NATO.
Hopefully sooner rather than later.
Then again, the crisis within NATO is something to be applauded. NATO in its present post-soviet manifestation is, in the first place, irrelevant, and in the second, a non-stop provocation of Russia, all that's left of the former "Soviet Empire."
Not only that, but it takes a shit-load of money to keep this bureaucratic juggernaut afloat, which is why the allegedly NATO-hating Trump has been strong-arming the me-too club for more "defence" spending.
Erdogan knows it was his NATO "allies" who were behind the attempted regime-change event back in 2016. He's closer to Russia and Iran these days than he is to any NATO allies.
But he's still in the club!
Those are the kind of internal contradictions that will destroy NATO.
Hopefully sooner rather than later.
Thursday, December 19, 2019
Why the White Helmets are untouchable
Trudeau's foreign policy is really Uncle Sam's foreign policy writ small. We've known that for some time. In fact, there are exactly zero examples of the folks in Ottawa diverging from US foreign policy in the PM Fluffy era.
America's little brother is tasked with doing stuff that Trump himself is loathe to do.
Like rolling out the red carpet for those bold humanitarians, the White Helmets. As you may recall, those are the folks in Syria who worked exclusively in the areas controlled by the radical Islamist head-choppers, who provided Western media with a steady stream of evidence of Assad's war crimes.
There's a reason Western media had to rely on the White Helmets for news about Syria. Sending their own reporters into combat zones meant certain death. Not at the hand of the Assad regime, but at the hands of the "freedom fighters."
It's instructive that while Israel, Jordan, and the US declined the opportunity to give sanctuary to any of these folks, Chrystia Freeland welcomed them to Canada.
The latest controversy around the White Helmets has sprouted up around the OPCW scandal. This hails back to the alleged Douma gas attack. There were a handful of MSM journos who pegged that as bullshit from the get-go. Robert Fisk of The Independent comes to mind.
If the Douma gas attack was indeed faked, as more and more mainstream journalists are saying, we are left with an awkward question.
The White Helmets showed us video of over forty dead victims of that alleged gas attack. If the gas attack was faked, where did those dead folks come from?
There's a reason the Globe and Mail and the CBC haven't said a word about the OPCW scandal. To acknowledge that would be to acknowledge that our Foreign Minister allowed dozens, if not hundreds, of hard-core Islamic terrorists into the country.
America's little brother is tasked with doing stuff that Trump himself is loathe to do.
Like rolling out the red carpet for those bold humanitarians, the White Helmets. As you may recall, those are the folks in Syria who worked exclusively in the areas controlled by the radical Islamist head-choppers, who provided Western media with a steady stream of evidence of Assad's war crimes.
There's a reason Western media had to rely on the White Helmets for news about Syria. Sending their own reporters into combat zones meant certain death. Not at the hand of the Assad regime, but at the hands of the "freedom fighters."
It's instructive that while Israel, Jordan, and the US declined the opportunity to give sanctuary to any of these folks, Chrystia Freeland welcomed them to Canada.
The latest controversy around the White Helmets has sprouted up around the OPCW scandal. This hails back to the alleged Douma gas attack. There were a handful of MSM journos who pegged that as bullshit from the get-go. Robert Fisk of The Independent comes to mind.
If the Douma gas attack was indeed faked, as more and more mainstream journalists are saying, we are left with an awkward question.
The White Helmets showed us video of over forty dead victims of that alleged gas attack. If the gas attack was faked, where did those dead folks come from?
There's a reason the Globe and Mail and the CBC haven't said a word about the OPCW scandal. To acknowledge that would be to acknowledge that our Foreign Minister allowed dozens, if not hundreds, of hard-core Islamic terrorists into the country.
Wednesday, December 18, 2019
Only eleven years left to save the planet
Greta is certainly doing her part! Are you doing yours?
The folks peddling the existential crisis seem to forget that eleven years doesn't mean shit to Mother Nature. Neither does two hundred years. A thousand years is but the blink of an eye to Mother Nature.
Ten thousand years ago the glaciers that covered my little farm here were receding. The planet was warming, thousands of years before anthropogenic climate change was even a possibility.
My inner sceptic doesn't fully embrace the climate-change hysteria, especially when the proposed solutions come from the likes of Goldman Sachs. Where I see rampant exploitation of natural resources that degrades our environment, I generally find the same Goldman Sachs capitalist mindset that now proposes to lead the for-profit charge against climate change.
That's just a little too cute, isn't it?
There's no question that the excesses of capitalism as we know it have ruinous consequences for our environment. The US has become the leading global oil producer by permitting wholesale fracking. Fracking technology has been around for a hundred years, but it didn't go viral, or scale up, as they say, till the last ten or fifteen.
At the onset of the modern fracking bonanza you'd see voices of protest here and there. Even Hollywood managed to put out an anti-fracking film or two, but anti-fracking representation has more or less disappeared, and the fracking train continues to roll merrily down the tracks.
That will end when America figures out that you can live a lot longer without oil than you can without clean water.
As you can see, it's possible to care about the environment while declining the invitation to climb aboard Greta's bandwagon.
There's plenty of other reasons why folks may not see anthropogenic climate change as an existential crisis. Maybe they're unemployed. Maybe they're homeless.
Maybe they're gonna be bankrupt and homeless in months because they can't pay their medical bills, in which case they're not too concerned about what happens in eleven years.
No amount of Greta Thunberg's hectoring will change that.
The folks peddling the existential crisis seem to forget that eleven years doesn't mean shit to Mother Nature. Neither does two hundred years. A thousand years is but the blink of an eye to Mother Nature.
Ten thousand years ago the glaciers that covered my little farm here were receding. The planet was warming, thousands of years before anthropogenic climate change was even a possibility.
My inner sceptic doesn't fully embrace the climate-change hysteria, especially when the proposed solutions come from the likes of Goldman Sachs. Where I see rampant exploitation of natural resources that degrades our environment, I generally find the same Goldman Sachs capitalist mindset that now proposes to lead the for-profit charge against climate change.
That's just a little too cute, isn't it?
There's no question that the excesses of capitalism as we know it have ruinous consequences for our environment. The US has become the leading global oil producer by permitting wholesale fracking. Fracking technology has been around for a hundred years, but it didn't go viral, or scale up, as they say, till the last ten or fifteen.
At the onset of the modern fracking bonanza you'd see voices of protest here and there. Even Hollywood managed to put out an anti-fracking film or two, but anti-fracking representation has more or less disappeared, and the fracking train continues to roll merrily down the tracks.
That will end when America figures out that you can live a lot longer without oil than you can without clean water.
As you can see, it's possible to care about the environment while declining the invitation to climb aboard Greta's bandwagon.
There's plenty of other reasons why folks may not see anthropogenic climate change as an existential crisis. Maybe they're unemployed. Maybe they're homeless.
Maybe they're gonna be bankrupt and homeless in months because they can't pay their medical bills, in which case they're not too concerned about what happens in eleven years.
No amount of Greta Thunberg's hectoring will change that.
Tuesday, December 17, 2019
USA = ground zero for zombie rising
There hasn't been a uprising of the underclass in America since the black ghettos went into the streets in the late sixties.
There's plenty of places around the world where the masses are restless these days, not only in your typical shithole countries, but in civilized societies in the Nations of Virtue.
Like France.
People rise when they can't take it anymore and have nothing to lose. Do you ever wonder what it would take to get Americans into the streets? After all, there seems to be plenty of them with nothing to lose.
Americans won't rise because they've been zombified. They've been zombified by a crapulent and corrupting popular culture, in a land where everybody has a gun and nobody has a chance.
They've been zombified by a media wholly given to sensationalism and glorifying the world-view of their billionaire owners.
Americans are becoming a nation of obese, pill-popping, gun-toting morons.
Expecting they'll ever rise up is probably wishful thinking.
There's plenty of places around the world where the masses are restless these days, not only in your typical shithole countries, but in civilized societies in the Nations of Virtue.
Like France.
People rise when they can't take it anymore and have nothing to lose. Do you ever wonder what it would take to get Americans into the streets? After all, there seems to be plenty of them with nothing to lose.
Americans won't rise because they've been zombified. They've been zombified by a crapulent and corrupting popular culture, in a land where everybody has a gun and nobody has a chance.
They've been zombified by a media wholly given to sensationalism and glorifying the world-view of their billionaire owners.
Americans are becoming a nation of obese, pill-popping, gun-toting morons.
Expecting they'll ever rise up is probably wishful thinking.
Sunday, December 15, 2019
Do you know your withering rights?
Frankly, I didn't know I had withering rights.
Nothing marks you as an elitist bullshit-slinger more effectively than using obscure terminology that befuddles your readers, which is unfortunate, because this reader agrees with HM Jocelyn's opinion piece at the CBC about what's going on at the US border.
But why does she turn this issue into an anti-Trump rant?
It wasn't Trump who sold out our rights; it was Chrystia Freeland, whose name is not even mentioned in the story.
Shame!
Nothing marks you as an elitist bullshit-slinger more effectively than using obscure terminology that befuddles your readers, which is unfortunate, because this reader agrees with HM Jocelyn's opinion piece at the CBC about what's going on at the US border.
But why does she turn this issue into an anti-Trump rant?
It wasn't Trump who sold out our rights; it was Chrystia Freeland, whose name is not even mentioned in the story.
Shame!
Canada all-in for butchery in Baghdad
Canadian media have given wall-to-wall sympathetic coverage to the anti-government protests in Hong Kong, which, as far as I know, have yet to take a single life.
That coverage has eclipsed mention of far more deadly protests in countries we are allied to. The CBC and the Globe and Mail don't seem to have a lot of room on their platforms to report on protests in Haiti, Gaza, Honduras, Chile, Colombia, France...
Or Iraq. In fact, In Iraq, where anti-government protesters have been slaughtered in the hundreds, we're proud to be steadfast in our training mission to train the folks shooting down the protesters. Check out Murray Brewster's load of bullshit on view at the CBC today.
In Hong Kong, the protesters are heroes.
In Iraq, we're proud to train the heroes who shoot the protesters down.
That's your tax dollars at work, folks!
That coverage has eclipsed mention of far more deadly protests in countries we are allied to. The CBC and the Globe and Mail don't seem to have a lot of room on their platforms to report on protests in Haiti, Gaza, Honduras, Chile, Colombia, France...
Or Iraq. In fact, In Iraq, where anti-government protesters have been slaughtered in the hundreds, we're proud to be steadfast in our training mission to train the folks shooting down the protesters. Check out Murray Brewster's load of bullshit on view at the CBC today.
In Hong Kong, the protesters are heroes.
In Iraq, we're proud to train the heroes who shoot the protesters down.
That's your tax dollars at work, folks!
Saturday, December 14, 2019
Kraut
When I posted a couple of weeks ago about the virtues of Mildmay, I neglected to mention that I had spent a few years domiciled there.
Full disclosure: I bought a house in Mildmay for $52,000 and sold it six or seven years later for fifty, which tells you everything you need to know about my investment savvy.
But it doesn't tell you much about Mildmay.
Mildmay was somewhat parochial at the time. There were locals who never brought themselves to acknowledge my morning greeting when I passed them on the sidewalk, not once in those six or seven years.
The area was first settled by German Catholics in the early to middle 19th century. These folks put the lie to Weber's theory that only German protestants had enough get up and go to amount to anything.
When I lived there, you'd still hear elderly folks conversing in their suddeutscher dialect on the street. What's really messed up is that in this Germanic back-water the grocery store didn't sell rye bread!
WTF?!?
But I shit you not. When friends from the city came up for a visit I'd ask them to bring a couple loaves of rye bread.
I don't know if it's a part of that German heritage, but I never knew so many people who were fermenting sauerkraut. It was the local equivalent to cooking meth, I guess. There was at least half a dozen guys I knew of who would be peddling their kraut and sausages at pretty much any local event.
And they were really good at it!
One of the kraut-meisters actually ran a pub out where the old railroad station used to be. He'd have all-you-can-eat kraut dinners for $4.99 once a week.
Combine an all-you-can-eat kraut and sausage buffet with my penchant for gluttony... you can just imagine the hilarity that ensued!
But that's a story for another day.
Full disclosure: I bought a house in Mildmay for $52,000 and sold it six or seven years later for fifty, which tells you everything you need to know about my investment savvy.
But it doesn't tell you much about Mildmay.
Mildmay was somewhat parochial at the time. There were locals who never brought themselves to acknowledge my morning greeting when I passed them on the sidewalk, not once in those six or seven years.
The area was first settled by German Catholics in the early to middle 19th century. These folks put the lie to Weber's theory that only German protestants had enough get up and go to amount to anything.
When I lived there, you'd still hear elderly folks conversing in their suddeutscher dialect on the street. What's really messed up is that in this Germanic back-water the grocery store didn't sell rye bread!
WTF?!?
But I shit you not. When friends from the city came up for a visit I'd ask them to bring a couple loaves of rye bread.
I don't know if it's a part of that German heritage, but I never knew so many people who were fermenting sauerkraut. It was the local equivalent to cooking meth, I guess. There was at least half a dozen guys I knew of who would be peddling their kraut and sausages at pretty much any local event.
And they were really good at it!
One of the kraut-meisters actually ran a pub out where the old railroad station used to be. He'd have all-you-can-eat kraut dinners for $4.99 once a week.
Combine an all-you-can-eat kraut and sausage buffet with my penchant for gluttony... you can just imagine the hilarity that ensued!
But that's a story for another day.
Friday, December 13, 2019
Why can't the wee ones sleep on the pool table?
The Farm Manager can't help but scour the real estate listings for places that are a little closer to the city. She figures then the kids would visit more often.
I have my doubts, but at least it would be less driving when we go to see them.
She finds this place in Mount Forest that she figures might fill the bill. Two beds and a bath up, and downstairs you've got another bedroom and full bath, plus an expansive space that's set up as a media room at the one end and has a pool table at the other.
We'd have called that the rec room back in the day.
She figures the pool table should come out, and that end of the rec-room-media-room could perhaps be utilised for a bunk bed to accommodate our as yet non-existent grand kids.
I've always fancied a pool table in the house, but I've never had one, except for those few years I lived in Durham. That was sweet! It was like living upstairs of the pool hall!
Durham actually had a real pool hall at the time, in the back at Hastie's Cigar Shop. By the time I got to Durham, Mr. Hastie had pretty much shut the back room down. He had vintage six by twelves back there. It was like a billiard museum. There I was, hardly a block away, with a billiard table in my basement.
You can see why nostalgia would force me to object to the FM's plan to replace the pool table with bunk beds.
Why can't the wee ones just sleep on the pool table?
I have my doubts, but at least it would be less driving when we go to see them.
She finds this place in Mount Forest that she figures might fill the bill. Two beds and a bath up, and downstairs you've got another bedroom and full bath, plus an expansive space that's set up as a media room at the one end and has a pool table at the other.
We'd have called that the rec room back in the day.
She figures the pool table should come out, and that end of the rec-room-media-room could perhaps be utilised for a bunk bed to accommodate our as yet non-existent grand kids.
I've always fancied a pool table in the house, but I've never had one, except for those few years I lived in Durham. That was sweet! It was like living upstairs of the pool hall!
Durham actually had a real pool hall at the time, in the back at Hastie's Cigar Shop. By the time I got to Durham, Mr. Hastie had pretty much shut the back room down. He had vintage six by twelves back there. It was like a billiard museum. There I was, hardly a block away, with a billiard table in my basement.
You can see why nostalgia would force me to object to the FM's plan to replace the pool table with bunk beds.
Why can't the wee ones just sleep on the pool table?
Thursday, December 12, 2019
You can get a place in Letterkenny cheap
Check this out.
That price would be your down payment if you bought in Toronto.
You could commute to your Bay Street office during the week while hanging with the real folks in Letterkenny on the weekend.
That's what you call a win-win.
And to cut down on the commute time, I'd suggest investing some of your savings in a high horse-power road rocket that can confidently pass ten cars at a time when the opportunity presents itself.
I suggest the first time you visit Letterkenny you show up in a Durango Hellcat.
I'm betting they'll treat you like the prodigal son and welcome you with open arms!
That price would be your down payment if you bought in Toronto.
You could commute to your Bay Street office during the week while hanging with the real folks in Letterkenny on the weekend.
That's what you call a win-win.
And to cut down on the commute time, I'd suggest investing some of your savings in a high horse-power road rocket that can confidently pass ten cars at a time when the opportunity presents itself.
I suggest the first time you visit Letterkenny you show up in a Durango Hellcat.
I'm betting they'll treat you like the prodigal son and welcome you with open arms!
Hard times at the bullshit factory
These are dog days in the journalism profession. Mainstream journo jobs have been downsized, rationalized, optimized, sanitized, professionalized, minimized, and just plain axed by the tens of thousands over the last decade or two.
Meanwhile, the J-schools keep pumping out new candidates for imaginary jobs.
There was a brief period as I was coming up when I toyed with the idea of a journalism career. It was the early '80's. Woodward and Bernstein were pop-culture icons. Journalism was a cool career that might even give you a chance to change the world!
I wrote a couple of things for the Ontarion, the student newspaper at the U of Goo. That was fun! I'd meet people at parties and they'd say hey, I read your article...
Made me feel good!
Then I wrote a feature on the Ontario Veterinary College. I interviewed a bunch of bigs at the college, including The Dean. These were folks who sported bespoke suits and ostentatious Rolex watches and liked to talk about the latest UN conference they'd attended, even though that's not what you were there to talk about.
The Ontario Veterinary College was the prestigious core around which an otherwise mediocre university had sprung up. It had just had its accreditation with the American Veterinary Medical Association downgraded to "probationary" status, which was something of a black eye. That's what I wanted to talk about.
A couple of hours after interviewing The Dean I got a call from his secretary. Mr. Dean wanted to proof my story before it appeared in public. This didn't agree with me. Although I've mellowed somewhat over the years, at the time I was the sort of obnoxious know-it-all who would have heckled Jesus as he was delivering the Sermon on the Mount.
I wasn't taking any guff from Mr. Dean.
So I published the story and sought the Dean's approval afterward, which pissed off not only him but a number of other well-dressed twats with nice wrist pieces, and that was the last story I had in the Ontarion.
Things are exponentially more fraught for working journalists today. Every in-house writer at any major title knows they are one story removed from becoming a blogger. These are smart people who, for the most part, know when they are writing bullshit, but they will keep writing it because they like the pay and perks that come with the position.
The kind of journalism practiced in the era of Oriana Fallaci, Molly Ivins, or IF Stone is long dead. Those more-or-less establishment writers would all be begging you to support their blog today. Mainstream journalism has become nothing more or less than the bullhorn of Empire.
That was of course always the case, but up until recently there was always room for dissenting voices within the mainstream.
Those days are over.
Meanwhile, the J-schools keep pumping out new candidates for imaginary jobs.
There was a brief period as I was coming up when I toyed with the idea of a journalism career. It was the early '80's. Woodward and Bernstein were pop-culture icons. Journalism was a cool career that might even give you a chance to change the world!
I wrote a couple of things for the Ontarion, the student newspaper at the U of Goo. That was fun! I'd meet people at parties and they'd say hey, I read your article...
Made me feel good!
Then I wrote a feature on the Ontario Veterinary College. I interviewed a bunch of bigs at the college, including The Dean. These were folks who sported bespoke suits and ostentatious Rolex watches and liked to talk about the latest UN conference they'd attended, even though that's not what you were there to talk about.
The Ontario Veterinary College was the prestigious core around which an otherwise mediocre university had sprung up. It had just had its accreditation with the American Veterinary Medical Association downgraded to "probationary" status, which was something of a black eye. That's what I wanted to talk about.
A couple of hours after interviewing The Dean I got a call from his secretary. Mr. Dean wanted to proof my story before it appeared in public. This didn't agree with me. Although I've mellowed somewhat over the years, at the time I was the sort of obnoxious know-it-all who would have heckled Jesus as he was delivering the Sermon on the Mount.
I wasn't taking any guff from Mr. Dean.
So I published the story and sought the Dean's approval afterward, which pissed off not only him but a number of other well-dressed twats with nice wrist pieces, and that was the last story I had in the Ontarion.
Things are exponentially more fraught for working journalists today. Every in-house writer at any major title knows they are one story removed from becoming a blogger. These are smart people who, for the most part, know when they are writing bullshit, but they will keep writing it because they like the pay and perks that come with the position.
The kind of journalism practiced in the era of Oriana Fallaci, Molly Ivins, or IF Stone is long dead. Those more-or-less establishment writers would all be begging you to support their blog today. Mainstream journalism has become nothing more or less than the bullhorn of Empire.
That was of course always the case, but up until recently there was always room for dissenting voices within the mainstream.
Those days are over.
Gang Wars: Crips v Bloods, Jets v Sharks, Hells Angels v Outlaws...
Yup, we all know a gang war when we see one. But we've never seen one like this.
Doctors v lawyers?!?
Get the f@ck outta here!
This is some serious shit. People are dying as two of the world's most esteemed professions go at it tooth and claw!
Only in Pakistan!
Doctors v lawyers?!?
Get the f@ck outta here!
This is some serious shit. People are dying as two of the world's most esteemed professions go at it tooth and claw!
Only in Pakistan!
Monday, December 9, 2019
The American Plan
Went to a Christmas get-together on the weekend. This is an annual event in Waterloo and quite often it's the only time I'll see some of these folks in the course of the year.
I must say it's such a cool thing to see how the younger generation is faring out. There's a gaggle of them well into the upper reaches of the post-secondary education system. And they're pretty much all taking useful stuff that will lead to gainful employment.
That's a common thread among many immigrant families, regardless of where they hail from. There's a big push to get your kids as much education as possible.
Then there's the outliers, like my nephew Sam.
Sam probably could have done without any post-secondary at all, but he felt the pressure. Sam's a bit of an outdoorsy guy and a free spirit to boot, and lucky for him, he found a legit college somewhere in Utah where they "teach" you the ins and outs of abseiling and freeclimbing.
In other words, college is one non-stop outdoor adventure trip.
Seemed to suit young Sam just fine. This diploma apparently qualifies him to work at ski resorts in the winter and at exclusive fishing resorts in the summer.
By "exclusive" I mean a thousand bucks a day for a one week stay at a fly-in resort in the North West Territories. Accommodation and all meals included.
And the fishing, of course.
They call that the "American Plan."
Pretty sure Sam is having way more fun than the rest of them.
I must say it's such a cool thing to see how the younger generation is faring out. There's a gaggle of them well into the upper reaches of the post-secondary education system. And they're pretty much all taking useful stuff that will lead to gainful employment.
That's a common thread among many immigrant families, regardless of where they hail from. There's a big push to get your kids as much education as possible.
Then there's the outliers, like my nephew Sam.
Sam probably could have done without any post-secondary at all, but he felt the pressure. Sam's a bit of an outdoorsy guy and a free spirit to boot, and lucky for him, he found a legit college somewhere in Utah where they "teach" you the ins and outs of abseiling and freeclimbing.
In other words, college is one non-stop outdoor adventure trip.
Seemed to suit young Sam just fine. This diploma apparently qualifies him to work at ski resorts in the winter and at exclusive fishing resorts in the summer.
By "exclusive" I mean a thousand bucks a day for a one week stay at a fly-in resort in the North West Territories. Accommodation and all meals included.
And the fishing, of course.
They call that the "American Plan."
Pretty sure Sam is having way more fun than the rest of them.
Sunday, December 8, 2019
The real reason Hong Kong millennials have no hope
It doesn't have a lot to do with China
Hong Kong is the most expensive city in the world. HK kids, aside from the wealthy and connected, are pretty much assured of never having their own place.
Ever.
Unless they inherit something.
So it's no wonder the kids are pissed off!
But it's been absolutely amazing how our current events managers have managed to direct millennial rage against the mainland, instead of on these guys, where it belongs; 9 Hong Kong billionaires who made their money in real estate.
"Democracy" isn't worth a rat's ass when you can't afford a place to live.
Ironically, millennials on the mainland can easily afford a place of their own in most of China's major cities.
Hong Kong is the most expensive city in the world. HK kids, aside from the wealthy and connected, are pretty much assured of never having their own place.
Ever.
Unless they inherit something.
So it's no wonder the kids are pissed off!
But it's been absolutely amazing how our current events managers have managed to direct millennial rage against the mainland, instead of on these guys, where it belongs; 9 Hong Kong billionaires who made their money in real estate.
"Democracy" isn't worth a rat's ass when you can't afford a place to live.
Ironically, millennials on the mainland can easily afford a place of their own in most of China's major cities.
A shoutout to Fat Hen Farm
Meet Ashley.
I've known Ashley since the day she was born. Here she is watering her little market garden in her yard in Stirling, Scotland. She delivers her organic salad greens around town by bicycle!
She's found herself a lovely network of like-minded folks, from organic farmers to artisinal bakers.
It's people like that who are gonna save the planet, not Al Gore or Greta Thunberg.
Go Ash! We're mighty proud of all you've achieved!
I've known Ashley since the day she was born. Here she is watering her little market garden in her yard in Stirling, Scotland. She delivers her organic salad greens around town by bicycle!
She's found herself a lovely network of like-minded folks, from organic farmers to artisinal bakers.
It's people like that who are gonna save the planet, not Al Gore or Greta Thunberg.
Go Ash! We're mighty proud of all you've achieved!
Saturday, December 7, 2019
American Exceptionalism goes full retard
If you've read the transcripts of Fiona Hill and Alexander Vindman's testimony at Impeachment Palooza, you come away with the impression that these folks genuinely believe that Russia poses a threat to the "free world," and that America is indispensable in standing up to "Russian aggression."
Expert witness Pamela Karlan went so far as to claim we need to arm Ukraine to fight the Russians over there so we don't have to fight them here!
That's the kind of delusional quackery that keeps the money taps gushing for America's "defence" industry.
A few days later we saw the spectacle of the same President they're working so hard to be rid of berating NATO's me-too nations for not spending enough money on their militaries.
What a load of rubbish!
The US alone outspends Russia approximately 10:1 on bombs and bullets. Throw in the spending of our NATO allies and that ratio rises to at least 15:1. How can any serious person still believe, given such a vast spending differential, Russia could possibly be any threat whatsoever?
What America needs is leadership that will throw out all these idiots, Trump included, really drain the swamp, and set America on a course that will be good not only for Americans, but for the entire world.
Expert witness Pamela Karlan went so far as to claim we need to arm Ukraine to fight the Russians over there so we don't have to fight them here!
That's the kind of delusional quackery that keeps the money taps gushing for America's "defence" industry.
A few days later we saw the spectacle of the same President they're working so hard to be rid of berating NATO's me-too nations for not spending enough money on their militaries.
What a load of rubbish!
The US alone outspends Russia approximately 10:1 on bombs and bullets. Throw in the spending of our NATO allies and that ratio rises to at least 15:1. How can any serious person still believe, given such a vast spending differential, Russia could possibly be any threat whatsoever?
What America needs is leadership that will throw out all these idiots, Trump included, really drain the swamp, and set America on a course that will be good not only for Americans, but for the entire world.
Wilmer at the Top Notch
Me and the Farm Manager used to run into Wilmer Nadjiwon quite regularly at the Top Notch Restaurant. We'd exchange "how-ya-doin'"s but, to my regret, we didn't know anything about the guy till after he passed away.
Turns out this elderly native dude of patrician bearing had written a book about his life, and what a life it was. Born in 1921 (he looked a good twenty years younger than his age), Mr. Nadjiwon had survived, in no particular order, the depression, residential school, sexual abuse, German U boats in the North Atlantic, alcoholism, poverty, front line action in WW II, and a lifetime of anti-native racism.
Even more remarkable than his life story is the fact that there is not so much as a wiff of woe-is-me in his telling of it.
We don't breakfast at the Top Notch as often as we used to, but we stopped in today. In addition to a decent meal at a fair price, we came away with this.
Wilmer was a prolific artist. We're proud to have a piece of this great man in our home. We're now trying to decide where to hang it.
It demands a place of honour.
Turns out this elderly native dude of patrician bearing had written a book about his life, and what a life it was. Born in 1921 (he looked a good twenty years younger than his age), Mr. Nadjiwon had survived, in no particular order, the depression, residential school, sexual abuse, German U boats in the North Atlantic, alcoholism, poverty, front line action in WW II, and a lifetime of anti-native racism.
Even more remarkable than his life story is the fact that there is not so much as a wiff of woe-is-me in his telling of it.
We don't breakfast at the Top Notch as often as we used to, but we stopped in today. In addition to a decent meal at a fair price, we came away with this.
Wilmer was a prolific artist. We're proud to have a piece of this great man in our home. We're now trying to decide where to hang it.
It demands a place of honour.
Friday, December 6, 2019
Thumbs up for Robbie
Here's my old pal Robbie on strike against Ford's cuts to education.
It's quite the shit-show in education. Apparently classrooms with forty teenagers in them are becoming the norm in the local high schools.
You know what it's like wrangling one or two teens...
...what the fuck would wrangling forty look like?
It's quite the shit-show in education. Apparently classrooms with forty teenagers in them are becoming the norm in the local high schools.
You know what it's like wrangling one or two teens...
...what the fuck would wrangling forty look like?
Walking the path of reconciliation
That's one of the top five talking points in yesterday's throne speech.
I can pretty much guarantee you that four or five years hence there'll have been a lot of talk about that path, but not a whole lotta walking on it.
What does "reconciliation" even mean?
They had everything they needed. They'd flourished for thousands of years.
We came and took away everything they had in a matter of a few hundred years.
We had the guns, germs, and steel.
We had the guns, germs, and steel.
Having a university administrator offer a tip of the mortarboard to the First Nation on whose stolen land the commencement ceremony is being staged is routinely fobbed off as "reconciliation."
Seems more like "rubbing it in."
Thursday, December 5, 2019
Throne speech promises tax cuts and partridge in pear tree
Canadian politics is just so boring compared to what goes on to the south of us.
The throne speech is supposedly one of the big whoops of our fabled democracy... but what a yawner!
We're simultaneously meeting our "climate change obligations" and trebling pipeline capacity. How in the heck do you pretend to work for a cleaner environment while at the same time ramping up the production and export of one of the world's dirtiest fossil fuels?
Do they really think we're stupid enough to fall for that?
Notice how cleverly the construction trades guys are being manipulated to support climate-killing energy projects. If the federal government got serious about a carbon-free future, every plumber and pipe-fitter and electrician and welder working in the oilsands would have a job tomorrow building green infrastructure for a cleaner future.
Aside from cutting taxes and saving the environment, our new and gentler minority government will also ban assault rifles. As far as I know, actual assault rifles are already banned, which is why they throw the "style" word in there.
At least they can claim they're doing something.
That's politics, I guess, all about the optics.
That's politics south of the border too, but the stakes seem to be so much larger!
They're on the verge of impeaching the president! OMG, that's history-making!
Not really. The walls have been closing in on Trump for three years, and I expect they'll still be closing in on President Trump three years from now. Trump is the shiny bauble the media dangle in front of you so you don't notice the rest of the news.
Meanwhile, the billionaires get richer and tent cities blossom.
The throne speech is supposedly one of the big whoops of our fabled democracy... but what a yawner!
We're simultaneously meeting our "climate change obligations" and trebling pipeline capacity. How in the heck do you pretend to work for a cleaner environment while at the same time ramping up the production and export of one of the world's dirtiest fossil fuels?
Do they really think we're stupid enough to fall for that?
Notice how cleverly the construction trades guys are being manipulated to support climate-killing energy projects. If the federal government got serious about a carbon-free future, every plumber and pipe-fitter and electrician and welder working in the oilsands would have a job tomorrow building green infrastructure for a cleaner future.
Aside from cutting taxes and saving the environment, our new and gentler minority government will also ban assault rifles. As far as I know, actual assault rifles are already banned, which is why they throw the "style" word in there.
At least they can claim they're doing something.
That's politics, I guess, all about the optics.
That's politics south of the border too, but the stakes seem to be so much larger!
They're on the verge of impeaching the president! OMG, that's history-making!
Not really. The walls have been closing in on Trump for three years, and I expect they'll still be closing in on President Trump three years from now. Trump is the shiny bauble the media dangle in front of you so you don't notice the rest of the news.
Meanwhile, the billionaires get richer and tent cities blossom.
Tuesday, December 3, 2019
There's a not-so-civil war within the billionaire class
I think they're getting scared.
The finger pointing has begun.
Check out this Fox News story by Charles Couger and Alex Pfeiffer, featuring an extended cameo by Tucker Carlson. The story calls out veteran billionaire greedbag Paul Singer on his being one of those slimeballs who give capitalism a bad name.
Funny thing is, you're watching this on media owned by another billionaire greedbag, Rupert Murdoch!
See what I mean!
The finger pointing has begun.
Check out this Fox News story by Charles Couger and Alex Pfeiffer, featuring an extended cameo by Tucker Carlson. The story calls out veteran billionaire greedbag Paul Singer on his being one of those slimeballs who give capitalism a bad name.
Funny thing is, you're watching this on media owned by another billionaire greedbag, Rupert Murdoch!
See what I mean!
Monday, December 2, 2019
Forget Toronto; a young couple in min wage jobs can still buy a house two hours away
I believe that everyone has the right to safe and affordable housing. But nobody has the "right" to live in downtown Toronto. Nothing wrong with letting the market sort out who the lucky dogs are gonna be.
If you're a climber and require the proximity of the trendiest restaurants and the most beautiful people, it may well be worth your while to make the sacrifices required to get into that market. Like paying three thousand a month for a studio apartment.
Others, especially young folks looking to start a family, might be interested in spending half that and having a house and a yard to show for it.
Check this out. Your mortgage on this is gonna run about a thousand a month. Add in taxes and utilities and you'll still be well under $1,500. For that, you get a 66 X 132 lot, three beds and two baths. And you own it! That mortgage goes away after twenty five years.
Mildmay is a quaint little town two hours and six minutes from downtown Toronto, according to Google Maps. It's got an old-timey pub, a liquor store, grocery store, and churches that still annoy you with the ding-donging of their damned bells every Sunday morning.
And of course the Mildmay Cheese Haus, where you can get... cheese.
Lots and lots of different kinds of cheese.
A young couple each in a minimum wage job can quality for a mortgage on this if they can beg/borrow/steal, or even save, a $15,000 down payment.
Minimum wage jobs are plentiful in the area. If you've got more than a pulse going for you, it shouldn't be hard to find more than minimum wage without too much of a commute. There's an outfit in Walkerton, ten minutes away, always on the lookout for welders at thirty bucks an hour.
What we don't have a lot of is job opportunities for coders, game developers, animators, and all the other cool careers that our high school counsellors have been pushing the kids into for the last twenty years.
Those folks are are out of luck. They're doomed to the big city and a life of being gouged by landlords and developers every month. Most of them will never have their own place.
If, on the other hand, you can weld or drive a truck, you're in luck!
If you're a climber and require the proximity of the trendiest restaurants and the most beautiful people, it may well be worth your while to make the sacrifices required to get into that market. Like paying three thousand a month for a studio apartment.
Others, especially young folks looking to start a family, might be interested in spending half that and having a house and a yard to show for it.
Check this out. Your mortgage on this is gonna run about a thousand a month. Add in taxes and utilities and you'll still be well under $1,500. For that, you get a 66 X 132 lot, three beds and two baths. And you own it! That mortgage goes away after twenty five years.
Mildmay is a quaint little town two hours and six minutes from downtown Toronto, according to Google Maps. It's got an old-timey pub, a liquor store, grocery store, and churches that still annoy you with the ding-donging of their damned bells every Sunday morning.
And of course the Mildmay Cheese Haus, where you can get... cheese.
Lots and lots of different kinds of cheese.
A young couple each in a minimum wage job can quality for a mortgage on this if they can beg/borrow/steal, or even save, a $15,000 down payment.
Minimum wage jobs are plentiful in the area. If you've got more than a pulse going for you, it shouldn't be hard to find more than minimum wage without too much of a commute. There's an outfit in Walkerton, ten minutes away, always on the lookout for welders at thirty bucks an hour.
What we don't have a lot of is job opportunities for coders, game developers, animators, and all the other cool careers that our high school counsellors have been pushing the kids into for the last twenty years.
Those folks are are out of luck. They're doomed to the big city and a life of being gouged by landlords and developers every month. Most of them will never have their own place.
If, on the other hand, you can weld or drive a truck, you're in luck!
Sunday, December 1, 2019
The Irishman
Right off the top, let me say that it's more than a little presumptuous to put out a three and a half hour movie. Really?
We were lucky to be watching on Netflix in the comfort of our home. I can't even imagine sitting in the multiplex, where you can't push "pause" for the multiple bathroom breaks you're gonna have in the course of the afternoon.
While it was certainly very well done, I think Scorsese et al are having their "OK Boomer" moment.
Pacino's Hoffa was, overall, on the sympathetic side. I've always been something of a Hoffa fan, so it was nice that in the end he was portrayed as trying to pry the tentacles of organized crime off "his" union.
People tend to forget that by the late fifties and throughout the sixties and seventies, truck drivers in the Teamsters pretty much set the benchmark for what working class pay and benefits could be.
Hoffa's biggest mistake, in my estimation, was in refusing to organize the independent owner-operators. That was a decision based on principle. Hoffa's position was that it wasn't the role of a labour union to negotiate a return on capital.
Sounds straight-forward enough. After all, owner-operators were "independent businessmen." But those independent businessmen cut the floor out from under the union jobs, and the rest is history.
Today, generally speaking, trucking is rightfully considered a shit job. Long hours, low pay, few if any benefits.
But back to the film. Robert De Niro did a masterful job not only playing the ageing Frank Sheeran, but standing in for all the other boomers doing their swan song here, including Scorsese himself. Scorsese got a little attention recently with an op-ed in the New York Times arguing that the 90-minutes-or-less adrenaline-drenched crap coming out of Hollywood these days isn't "cinema."
This is definitely cinema.
We were lucky to be watching on Netflix in the comfort of our home. I can't even imagine sitting in the multiplex, where you can't push "pause" for the multiple bathroom breaks you're gonna have in the course of the afternoon.
While it was certainly very well done, I think Scorsese et al are having their "OK Boomer" moment.
Pacino's Hoffa was, overall, on the sympathetic side. I've always been something of a Hoffa fan, so it was nice that in the end he was portrayed as trying to pry the tentacles of organized crime off "his" union.
People tend to forget that by the late fifties and throughout the sixties and seventies, truck drivers in the Teamsters pretty much set the benchmark for what working class pay and benefits could be.
Hoffa's biggest mistake, in my estimation, was in refusing to organize the independent owner-operators. That was a decision based on principle. Hoffa's position was that it wasn't the role of a labour union to negotiate a return on capital.
Sounds straight-forward enough. After all, owner-operators were "independent businessmen." But those independent businessmen cut the floor out from under the union jobs, and the rest is history.
Today, generally speaking, trucking is rightfully considered a shit job. Long hours, low pay, few if any benefits.
But back to the film. Robert De Niro did a masterful job not only playing the ageing Frank Sheeran, but standing in for all the other boomers doing their swan song here, including Scorsese himself. Scorsese got a little attention recently with an op-ed in the New York Times arguing that the 90-minutes-or-less adrenaline-drenched crap coming out of Hollywood these days isn't "cinema."
This is definitely cinema.
Saturday, November 30, 2019
Remembering Charlie Hill
If memory serves, my folks bought that place next to the railway station in Elora in '59. Our neighbour a few doors south on the Elora Road was Charlie Hill.
The railway station is long gone, but our old house is still there, next to The Gorge Family Restaurant. At the time we moved in it came with four acres, a barn, and two chicken coops. There was no indoor plumbing. We got our water from a hand pump out front, and you did your business in an outhouse out back.
That was a bitch in the winter months!
Charlie Hill was a well-driller who ran a dance-hall on the side. From time to time drunken revellers from Charlie's dance-hall would turn up at our place. I recall one night when a carload of guys kept coming back looking for a gal who had escaped their clutches. They suspected we were hiding her somewhere.
I don't know much about Charlie's back story, but he was one of the key mentors who helped my father transition from penniless immigrant to solid dues-paying member of Canada's middle class.
I do know that Charlie had put in some time at the Beatty plant five miles down the road, in Fergus. That was the family business of Perrin Beatty, long time Conservative political operative. The Beatty operation wasn't held in particularly high regard among the working class at the time.
But Charlie's stint there gave rise to a bit of wisdom that I must have heard a thousand times from my father.
It's not how much money you make; it's what you do with it that counts.
This was based on Charlie's astute observation that he had prospered mightily on the road of life, while many of his cohorts at Beatty had floundered. That was because, as the story goes, those cohorts had repaired to the pub after a shift, while Charlie stayed back and worked a second shift.
I can see the logic at work here.
Makes perfect sense. Instead of squandering your pay at the beer hall, you had a second paycheque coming in. That, and the take from your dance hall, gave you the spare cash to do a little real estate speculation.
That's how every DP who ever washed up on these shores got out of the working class, and it was a strategy that even worked for guys who were born here, like Charlie.
Save your money and invest. It's a no-brainer.
At the same time, I think there was more to Charlie's success than that. Charlie's well-drilling concern put in the water-well when we got our indoor plumbing, and he did the water-wells at the next couple of places as we were moving up the socio-economic ladder.
Back then, drilling a water-well would take days and days. In hindsight, I think Charlie always kept the drill turning for as long as it took before he had a contract for his next well. He may have struck water on day one, but you'd pay for the next three or four days anyway.
Charlie was a good role model in many ways, and he was for sure a great guy for my father to know, but that came with a downside. Charlie had a grade four education, which led my dear father to conclude you only needed a grade four education to make it in this country.
Dad had that beat with his eight years of formal education, and he prospered mightily too, but I think that may have somewhat blinded him to the value of higher education at the time.
But that was then.
Charlie's former dance hall still stands in the middle of that little subdivision at the south end of Elora. I think it's an art studio now.
That subdivision is one of Charlie's legacies.
He had others.
He used to own the property where the Canadian Tire store now stands on Woodlawn Road in Guelph.
By that time, Dad had been in the real estate business for a few years, and Charlie was not only a mentor, but a client. That property was the subject of a hilarious three-way Mexican standoff between Charlie, my father, and Frank Silvestro, a guy who showed up in CBC documentaries about the "Mafia" years later.
But that's a story for another time...
The railway station is long gone, but our old house is still there, next to The Gorge Family Restaurant. At the time we moved in it came with four acres, a barn, and two chicken coops. There was no indoor plumbing. We got our water from a hand pump out front, and you did your business in an outhouse out back.
That was a bitch in the winter months!
Charlie Hill was a well-driller who ran a dance-hall on the side. From time to time drunken revellers from Charlie's dance-hall would turn up at our place. I recall one night when a carload of guys kept coming back looking for a gal who had escaped their clutches. They suspected we were hiding her somewhere.
I don't know much about Charlie's back story, but he was one of the key mentors who helped my father transition from penniless immigrant to solid dues-paying member of Canada's middle class.
I do know that Charlie had put in some time at the Beatty plant five miles down the road, in Fergus. That was the family business of Perrin Beatty, long time Conservative political operative. The Beatty operation wasn't held in particularly high regard among the working class at the time.
But Charlie's stint there gave rise to a bit of wisdom that I must have heard a thousand times from my father.
It's not how much money you make; it's what you do with it that counts.
This was based on Charlie's astute observation that he had prospered mightily on the road of life, while many of his cohorts at Beatty had floundered. That was because, as the story goes, those cohorts had repaired to the pub after a shift, while Charlie stayed back and worked a second shift.
I can see the logic at work here.
Makes perfect sense. Instead of squandering your pay at the beer hall, you had a second paycheque coming in. That, and the take from your dance hall, gave you the spare cash to do a little real estate speculation.
That's how every DP who ever washed up on these shores got out of the working class, and it was a strategy that even worked for guys who were born here, like Charlie.
Save your money and invest. It's a no-brainer.
At the same time, I think there was more to Charlie's success than that. Charlie's well-drilling concern put in the water-well when we got our indoor plumbing, and he did the water-wells at the next couple of places as we were moving up the socio-economic ladder.
Back then, drilling a water-well would take days and days. In hindsight, I think Charlie always kept the drill turning for as long as it took before he had a contract for his next well. He may have struck water on day one, but you'd pay for the next three or four days anyway.
Charlie was a good role model in many ways, and he was for sure a great guy for my father to know, but that came with a downside. Charlie had a grade four education, which led my dear father to conclude you only needed a grade four education to make it in this country.
Dad had that beat with his eight years of formal education, and he prospered mightily too, but I think that may have somewhat blinded him to the value of higher education at the time.
But that was then.
Charlie's former dance hall still stands in the middle of that little subdivision at the south end of Elora. I think it's an art studio now.
That subdivision is one of Charlie's legacies.
He had others.
He used to own the property where the Canadian Tire store now stands on Woodlawn Road in Guelph.
By that time, Dad had been in the real estate business for a few years, and Charlie was not only a mentor, but a client. That property was the subject of a hilarious three-way Mexican standoff between Charlie, my father, and Frank Silvestro, a guy who showed up in CBC documentaries about the "Mafia" years later.
But that's a story for another time...
White Helmets fairy tale fraying rapidly
It has always been obvious to anyone capable of critical thinking that the tale of the White Helmets, those brave Syrian first responders, was as far-fetched as it was fetching. Up until very recently, however, anyone voicing their suspicions has been dismissed as an Assad-loving Putin stooge.
That's changing. Over the past week both Peter Hitchens of the Mail on Sunday and Jonathan Steele of The Guardian have joined the ranks of those disclaiming the official narrative. Neither of these writers can be accused of pro-Assad sympathies or of being Putin's stooge. So far nobody in mainstream Canadian media has had the courage to pick up the story.
Seems to me Chrystia has some 'splainin' to do.
That's changing. Over the past week both Peter Hitchens of the Mail on Sunday and Jonathan Steele of The Guardian have joined the ranks of those disclaiming the official narrative. Neither of these writers can be accused of pro-Assad sympathies or of being Putin's stooge. So far nobody in mainstream Canadian media has had the courage to pick up the story.
Seems to me Chrystia has some 'splainin' to do.
Meet Canada's next Prime Minister
Doug Ford.
Before you dismiss the pot-addled hillbilly's ruminations, consider the following facts.
Since his lame-duck showing in the recent election, the knives have been out for Andrew Scheer. There's a leadership review coming up in a few months. Scheer's gone then, if not before.
At the same time, there's a re-branding of Doug's image afoot. His much-anticipated meeting with Justin last week unexpectedly became a virtual love-in. Today he's in the news for spearheading a drive to get more federal health care funding to the provinces.
What a mensch!
What a champion of the people! Look for Doug at a Pride Parade near you anytime now, as the image buffing moves into high gear.
With Scheer out of the way and Trudeau propped up by a shaky coalition, a kinder, gentler Doug Ford would have the wind at his back.
This could prove beneficial to Ontario's teachers, who are battling the Ford government over new collective agreements. Doug's the most far-right Ontario preem since the dark days of Mean Mike Harris. He hates teachers, hates unions, and he especially hates teachers' unions.
The only thing that could trump all that hate is his political ambition!
Before you dismiss the pot-addled hillbilly's ruminations, consider the following facts.
Since his lame-duck showing in the recent election, the knives have been out for Andrew Scheer. There's a leadership review coming up in a few months. Scheer's gone then, if not before.
At the same time, there's a re-branding of Doug's image afoot. His much-anticipated meeting with Justin last week unexpectedly became a virtual love-in. Today he's in the news for spearheading a drive to get more federal health care funding to the provinces.
What a mensch!
What a champion of the people! Look for Doug at a Pride Parade near you anytime now, as the image buffing moves into high gear.
With Scheer out of the way and Trudeau propped up by a shaky coalition, a kinder, gentler Doug Ford would have the wind at his back.
This could prove beneficial to Ontario's teachers, who are battling the Ford government over new collective agreements. Doug's the most far-right Ontario preem since the dark days of Mean Mike Harris. He hates teachers, hates unions, and he especially hates teachers' unions.
The only thing that could trump all that hate is his political ambition!
International Buy Nothing Day flops again
Fox News has some timely coverage of International Buy Nothing Day. That's one day a year set aside as a protest against consumerism.
Coincidentally, this year Buy Nothing Day happened to fall on Black Friday. Looks to me like we're a long way from abolishing rampant consumerism.
Our addiction to buying shoddy schlock we don't need far outweighs any commitment we may have to sustainable living on this planet.
As a species, we are doomed to shop till we, quite literally, drop.
Coincidentally, this year Buy Nothing Day happened to fall on Black Friday. Looks to me like we're a long way from abolishing rampant consumerism.
Our addiction to buying shoddy schlock we don't need far outweighs any commitment we may have to sustainable living on this planet.
As a species, we are doomed to shop till we, quite literally, drop.
Wednesday, November 27, 2019
Civil war in the Deep State?
Things aren't going that well with Impeachment Palooza.
I had it pegged correctly when I wrote DNC on brink of spectacular own goal back in September.
Not only is Biden's Ukraine hanky-panky coming out, various mainstream media outlets are now focusing on the Biden family's China hi-jinx.
The Biden candidacy is toast.
I strongly suspect that we're on the cusp of a Trump rehabilitation initiative at the MSM.
The Dems aren't doing a very good job of sand-bagging Bernie. Bernie v. Bloomberg is indeed a fight for the soul of the Democratic Party, but why should the billionaire donor class worry about a billionaire v. billionaire showdown between Trump and Bloomie if they've already got one of theirs in the White House?
Although Trump has been widely castigated for his alleged pro-Putin agenda, the actual record is that the military-industrial complex's billionaire owners have seen a rising budgetary tide lift all their boats under Trump.
Sooner or later, in a Trump v. Bernie showdown, they're gonna go with Trump, and they'll marshal all their resources to make it happen.
I had it pegged correctly when I wrote DNC on brink of spectacular own goal back in September.
Not only is Biden's Ukraine hanky-panky coming out, various mainstream media outlets are now focusing on the Biden family's China hi-jinx.
The Biden candidacy is toast.
I strongly suspect that we're on the cusp of a Trump rehabilitation initiative at the MSM.
The Dems aren't doing a very good job of sand-bagging Bernie. Bernie v. Bloomberg is indeed a fight for the soul of the Democratic Party, but why should the billionaire donor class worry about a billionaire v. billionaire showdown between Trump and Bloomie if they've already got one of theirs in the White House?
Although Trump has been widely castigated for his alleged pro-Putin agenda, the actual record is that the military-industrial complex's billionaire owners have seen a rising budgetary tide lift all their boats under Trump.
Sooner or later, in a Trump v. Bernie showdown, they're gonna go with Trump, and they'll marshal all their resources to make it happen.
Pot-addled hillbilly meets vape technology
I've smoked pot since I worked at John's Supertest on Waterloo Ave in Guelph. Smoking pot required three ingredients; a bag of weed, a pack of rolling papers, and a book of matches.
That's what smoking pot looked like for fifty years. You knew what to do and you knew what you were doing.
Then, a few years ago, I thought I'd go modern.
Found myself with a vaporiser, or a 'vape' as the in-the-know folks call them.
Near as I can tell, "vape" is one of those words that can be both a verb and a noun. So instead of twisting one up and sparking it, I now vape from a vape.
I've never done well with "progress."
Somewhere deep inside I still hope computers are a passing fad. But this vape thing was OK.
My pot lasted longer and my chronic cough diminished...
It was all good!
But a few weeks ago, my vape horked up a vital internal part while I was cleaning it.
Had to get a new one.
Went to the shop where I got the last one, but that absolutely perfect vape that I'd paid a hundred bucks for a few years ago was no longer available.
I walked away with a PAX2 for two hundred bucks.
Costs have doubled while efficacy has halved. Isn't that the modern way?
I've had two very frustrating weeks trying to learn the new technology. Even bought a pack of rolling papers for the first time in years, because the learning curve was pretty flat for the first little while.
After at least four on-line tutorials, I think I've figured out what the different sequences of blooping lights mean. They mean different things than they meant on my old vape.
For two weeks I was essentially sucking air.
But I'm getting the hang of it.
That's what smoking pot looked like for fifty years. You knew what to do and you knew what you were doing.
Then, a few years ago, I thought I'd go modern.
Found myself with a vaporiser, or a 'vape' as the in-the-know folks call them.
Near as I can tell, "vape" is one of those words that can be both a verb and a noun. So instead of twisting one up and sparking it, I now vape from a vape.
I've never done well with "progress."
Somewhere deep inside I still hope computers are a passing fad. But this vape thing was OK.
My pot lasted longer and my chronic cough diminished...
It was all good!
But a few weeks ago, my vape horked up a vital internal part while I was cleaning it.
Had to get a new one.
Went to the shop where I got the last one, but that absolutely perfect vape that I'd paid a hundred bucks for a few years ago was no longer available.
I walked away with a PAX2 for two hundred bucks.
Costs have doubled while efficacy has halved. Isn't that the modern way?
I've had two very frustrating weeks trying to learn the new technology. Even bought a pack of rolling papers for the first time in years, because the learning curve was pretty flat for the first little while.
After at least four on-line tutorials, I think I've figured out what the different sequences of blooping lights mean. They mean different things than they meant on my old vape.
For two weeks I was essentially sucking air.
But I'm getting the hang of it.
Tuesday, November 26, 2019
Party-pooping pinkos at the CBC
Anybody who has followed Canadian politics in the last thirty years is familiar with the name "Warren Kinsella."
We're never quite sure about why we remember the name. Was he a cabinet minister back in the Chretien era?
Was he a Liberal senator?
I know the name, but...
It's all working to plan for Warren. He's been building his brand for a good long time, and he's made it into the upper reaches of the political lobbying game, where he can trade that name recognition for cold hard cash.
Or at least it was working to plan till the party-pooping pinkos at the CBC put out this story.
That's some slimy shit! That's the kind of slimy stuff Trump would do!
Or Biden. Or Clinton...
But we've always believed that Canada was different. Our politics were not corrupt. We may have had robust debates, but we never stooped to dirty tricks.
That CBC story is strongly insinuating that the Conservatives were behind this smear campaign. Meanwhile there's a bit of a stink out in Alberta about Kenney having secretly bankrolled a straw candidate just to split the opposition.
Maybe we're not that different after all.
We're never quite sure about why we remember the name. Was he a cabinet minister back in the Chretien era?
Was he a Liberal senator?
I know the name, but...
It's all working to plan for Warren. He's been building his brand for a good long time, and he's made it into the upper reaches of the political lobbying game, where he can trade that name recognition for cold hard cash.
Or at least it was working to plan till the party-pooping pinkos at the CBC put out this story.
That's some slimy shit! That's the kind of slimy stuff Trump would do!
Or Biden. Or Clinton...
But we've always believed that Canada was different. Our politics were not corrupt. We may have had robust debates, but we never stooped to dirty tricks.
That CBC story is strongly insinuating that the Conservatives were behind this smear campaign. Meanwhile there's a bit of a stink out in Alberta about Kenney having secretly bankrolled a straw candidate just to split the opposition.
Maybe we're not that different after all.
Monday, November 25, 2019
Chrystia now deploying diplomatic midas touch in service of national unity
This should be fun to watch!
It won't take her long to conclude that Putin is behind Western alienation. If only we throw a few more sanctions at Russia, the Dominion might yet survive.
Chrystia cruised from strength to strength during her stint as FM. She pretty much broke Trump's back with her steely NAFTA negotiations. Then she stood up to the Saudis by courageously ushering a single Saudi teen dissident to a press conference. Then she singlehandedly restored democracy in Venezuela... oh wait... no, I guess we had the thirteen amigos on board for that triumph of democracy.
Canada's never-better relations with China would be the cherry on top.
Yup, Canada's in good shape now that Chrystia has the National Unity file.
It won't take her long to conclude that Putin is behind Western alienation. If only we throw a few more sanctions at Russia, the Dominion might yet survive.
Chrystia cruised from strength to strength during her stint as FM. She pretty much broke Trump's back with her steely NAFTA negotiations. Then she stood up to the Saudis by courageously ushering a single Saudi teen dissident to a press conference. Then she singlehandedly restored democracy in Venezuela... oh wait... no, I guess we had the thirteen amigos on board for that triumph of democracy.
Canada's never-better relations with China would be the cherry on top.
Yup, Canada's in good shape now that Chrystia has the National Unity file.
Sunday, November 24, 2019
Three cheers for Meaghan Landry
Damn straight!
Nobody should ever apologize for being working class, for working in a paper-mill or a in a shipyard or on a construction site.
"Lyin' Brian" worked hard all his life to escape his working class roots. That was his choice.
Brian became a complete traitor to those he left behind after he went through those university doors. The son of an electrician who worked in the mines worked very hard to give the class he aspired to, the ruling class, one of the greatest gifts of the late 20th century.
Free trade.
Brian worked very hard to facilitate the destruction of Canada's working class by legitimising the wholesale de-industrialization of the Canadian economy.
Thanks to Brian, the capitalist class could move their factories to Mexico. Twenty dollar an hour jobs in Southern Ontario became dollar an hour jobs in Monterrey.
On his retirement from politics, Brian was richly rewarded with lucrative do-nothing sinecures on corporate boards. The electrician's son from Baie Comeau is a millionaire many times over.
Good on Meaghan for calling out this BS. Not everybody aspires to wealth and power, and those who don't are just as entitled to a dignified life as is Brian Mulroney.
Nobody should ever apologize for being working class, for working in a paper-mill or a in a shipyard or on a construction site.
"Lyin' Brian" worked hard all his life to escape his working class roots. That was his choice.
Brian became a complete traitor to those he left behind after he went through those university doors. The son of an electrician who worked in the mines worked very hard to give the class he aspired to, the ruling class, one of the greatest gifts of the late 20th century.
Free trade.
Brian worked very hard to facilitate the destruction of Canada's working class by legitimising the wholesale de-industrialization of the Canadian economy.
Thanks to Brian, the capitalist class could move their factories to Mexico. Twenty dollar an hour jobs in Southern Ontario became dollar an hour jobs in Monterrey.
On his retirement from politics, Brian was richly rewarded with lucrative do-nothing sinecures on corporate boards. The electrician's son from Baie Comeau is a millionaire many times over.
Good on Meaghan for calling out this BS. Not everybody aspires to wealth and power, and those who don't are just as entitled to a dignified life as is Brian Mulroney.
Saturday, November 23, 2019
Good riots/bad riots
Looks like Canada is all-in for ramping up the violence in Hong Kong.
The Globe and Mail, Canada's national newspaper of record, today features a 16 year old Canadian on the front page, a Canadian kid of HK origin who is vigorously helping restore democracy to the former British colony.
Then "Andy" gets two full pages of hero worship in the Folio feature.
Here's the first few lines of Nathan VanderKlippe's hagiography;
Andy raises a hand and begins to count the crimes he has committed as a Hong Kong protester in the past five months. Arson, attacking police, inciting violence...
Lucky for Andy he's having his fun in Hong Kong. In Canada he'd be locked up for sure.
But don't you know, the Hong Kong riots are good riots, because they are aimed at making trouble for China. If we are to be loyal servants to our American bosses, we must hate China with all our hearts.
Meanwhile, Canada's national newspaper of record is largely silent on the many more deadly protests going on around the world.
The Yellow Vesters are still at it in France, after a year of protests that have often turned deadly. Mum's the word on protests in France. Even though Macron has said some rude things about NATO recently, our Globe and Mail is loathe to criticise his heavy-handed (far heavier hands than China) treatment of protesters.
Look at the protests on-going in some of those countries we allied ourselves with in the "Lima Group." Where's the Globe's coverage of the deadly riots in Chile and Columbia and Honduras? Those are obviously bad riots, because as far as I know, we're still allied with those police states in our attempt to restore democracy to Venezuela.
Some of the deadliest pro-democracy riots in the world right now are going on in Haiti, a country where Canada has played a pivotal role in over-throwing democratically elected governments. Twice. Good luck finding meaningful coverage of those bad Haitian riots in your Globe.
Thank God for our free press!
The Globe and Mail, Canada's national newspaper of record, today features a 16 year old Canadian on the front page, a Canadian kid of HK origin who is vigorously helping restore democracy to the former British colony.
Then "Andy" gets two full pages of hero worship in the Folio feature.
Here's the first few lines of Nathan VanderKlippe's hagiography;
Andy raises a hand and begins to count the crimes he has committed as a Hong Kong protester in the past five months. Arson, attacking police, inciting violence...
Lucky for Andy he's having his fun in Hong Kong. In Canada he'd be locked up for sure.
But don't you know, the Hong Kong riots are good riots, because they are aimed at making trouble for China. If we are to be loyal servants to our American bosses, we must hate China with all our hearts.
Meanwhile, Canada's national newspaper of record is largely silent on the many more deadly protests going on around the world.
The Yellow Vesters are still at it in France, after a year of protests that have often turned deadly. Mum's the word on protests in France. Even though Macron has said some rude things about NATO recently, our Globe and Mail is loathe to criticise his heavy-handed (far heavier hands than China) treatment of protesters.
Look at the protests on-going in some of those countries we allied ourselves with in the "Lima Group." Where's the Globe's coverage of the deadly riots in Chile and Columbia and Honduras? Those are obviously bad riots, because as far as I know, we're still allied with those police states in our attempt to restore democracy to Venezuela.
Some of the deadliest pro-democracy riots in the world right now are going on in Haiti, a country where Canada has played a pivotal role in over-throwing democratically elected governments. Twice. Good luck finding meaningful coverage of those bad Haitian riots in your Globe.
Thank God for our free press!
What is prosperity?
I have a hunch that if our new Minister for Middle Class Prosperity doesn't have a clue who the middle-class are, she's probably clueless about the meaning of "prosperity" as well.
That's not surprising. A lot of the middle class don't have a clue about prosperity either.
Whereas the word once implied a state of well-being, today it just means the ability to consume. If you can buy all the latest trendy gadgets and stylish fashions, you're prospering.
If you can't, you're not.
How did it come to this?
Somebody will no doubt wring a PhD thesis out of this question eventually, if they haven't already. We've been conditioned to believe that consumption for its own sake is a virtue. The more you consume, the more virtuous you are. A system based on perpetual economic growth via ever-growing consumption, in a finite world, needs a lot of powerful bullshit to get us to overlook its inherent contradictions.
And do we ever get the BS. Advertising and mass media have made us all suckers. Our suckerdom has exponentially increased over the last few years as Big Tech has sucked us all into its orbit.
It doesn't have to be this way.
Buy Nothing Day is coming up fast; November 29.
You can do it!
You can go a whole day without being a part of the consumer-driven capitalist culture that is destroying our planet.
Just remember to top up the gas tank and grab an extra six-pack on the 28th!
That's not surprising. A lot of the middle class don't have a clue about prosperity either.
Whereas the word once implied a state of well-being, today it just means the ability to consume. If you can buy all the latest trendy gadgets and stylish fashions, you're prospering.
If you can't, you're not.
How did it come to this?
Somebody will no doubt wring a PhD thesis out of this question eventually, if they haven't already. We've been conditioned to believe that consumption for its own sake is a virtue. The more you consume, the more virtuous you are. A system based on perpetual economic growth via ever-growing consumption, in a finite world, needs a lot of powerful bullshit to get us to overlook its inherent contradictions.
And do we ever get the BS. Advertising and mass media have made us all suckers. Our suckerdom has exponentially increased over the last few years as Big Tech has sucked us all into its orbit.
It doesn't have to be this way.
Buy Nothing Day is coming up fast; November 29.
You can do it!
You can go a whole day without being a part of the consumer-driven capitalist culture that is destroying our planet.
Just remember to top up the gas tank and grab an extra six-pack on the 28th!
Canada scared silly over status in "Five Eyes" club
Who are the "Five Eyes?"
The Five Eyes are the USA and four other nations, who, not to put too fine a point on it, are Uncle Sam's bestest besties.
Yup, we're in Uncle Sam's extra-special bumboy club!
Sure enough, Trump's national security adviser Robert O'Brien showed up at the Halifax International Security Forum to give Canada a stern warning that we could get kicked out of the extra-special bumboy club if we incorporate Huawei technology in our 5G infrastructure.
As you will recall, the incarceration of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou was one of the triumphs of Chrystia Freeland's tenure as FM. Thousands of Canadian canola growers remain grateful for her efforts.
As far as this Canadian is concerned, the sooner we get kicked out of the Five Eyes club, the better. It's long past time to walk away from our role as Washington's "special" friend. Let's just be a normal independent sovereign nation instead.
Here's what bothers me a lot more about our 5G roll-out than whether or not Huawei is part of it. Where is the discussion about the health implications of 5G technology? Apparently, 5G is way more efficacious in growing brain tumours in lab rats than 4G.
What I've noticed over the past few months is that it's become much easier to find stories about how that's a "conspiracy theory," and much harder to find rational debate about what the actual health implications might be.
I'm guessing that's because the tech giants who are pushing 5G are the same tech giants who have taken it upon themselves to stamp out "fake news," and certainly anything that could impede their profitability going forward would be stamped out.
Where is the debate around 5G?
The Five Eyes are the USA and four other nations, who, not to put too fine a point on it, are Uncle Sam's bestest besties.
Yup, we're in Uncle Sam's extra-special bumboy club!
Sure enough, Trump's national security adviser Robert O'Brien showed up at the Halifax International Security Forum to give Canada a stern warning that we could get kicked out of the extra-special bumboy club if we incorporate Huawei technology in our 5G infrastructure.
As you will recall, the incarceration of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou was one of the triumphs of Chrystia Freeland's tenure as FM. Thousands of Canadian canola growers remain grateful for her efforts.
As far as this Canadian is concerned, the sooner we get kicked out of the Five Eyes club, the better. It's long past time to walk away from our role as Washington's "special" friend. Let's just be a normal independent sovereign nation instead.
Here's what bothers me a lot more about our 5G roll-out than whether or not Huawei is part of it. Where is the discussion about the health implications of 5G technology? Apparently, 5G is way more efficacious in growing brain tumours in lab rats than 4G.
What I've noticed over the past few months is that it's become much easier to find stories about how that's a "conspiracy theory," and much harder to find rational debate about what the actual health implications might be.
I'm guessing that's because the tech giants who are pushing 5G are the same tech giants who have taken it upon themselves to stamp out "fake news," and certainly anything that could impede their profitability going forward would be stamped out.
Where is the debate around 5G?
Minister of Middle Class Prosperity doesn't know who the middle class is
Justin Trudeau invented a new cabinet post for his new, more humble government; Minister of Middle Class Prosperity.
Ya, that'll be a vote-grabber in the next election!
First bump in the road? Minister for Middle Class Prosperity Mona Fortier doesn't seem to know what the "middle class" is. I can see why she might struggle with that. Before going into politics, the MBA-wielding Ms. Fortier worked in something called "strategic communications."
No worries, Mona!
Check out this video of your boss speechifying at the Amazon warehouse... I mean "fullfillment (not to be confused with fulfilment) centre" in Brampton a couple of years ago.
According to Justin, that warehouse brought to Brampton 700 good jobs that will strengthen the middle class.
At fourteen bucks an hour!
In the real world, fourteen dollars an hour is not middle class; it's working poor.
Ya, that'll be a vote-grabber in the next election!
First bump in the road? Minister for Middle Class Prosperity Mona Fortier doesn't seem to know what the "middle class" is. I can see why she might struggle with that. Before going into politics, the MBA-wielding Ms. Fortier worked in something called "strategic communications."
No worries, Mona!
Check out this video of your boss speechifying at the Amazon warehouse... I mean "fullfillment (not to be confused with fulfilment) centre" in Brampton a couple of years ago.
According to Justin, that warehouse brought to Brampton 700 good jobs that will strengthen the middle class.
At fourteen bucks an hour!
In the real world, fourteen dollars an hour is not middle class; it's working poor.
Friday, November 22, 2019
Barry's Construction
Once a month or so I have breakfast with an old pal who is very much on the left end of the political spectrum. We were discussing the homelessness situation in town, which is very much a part of the overall affordable housing crisis facing Canada.
That's a crisis that's been brewing for decades, and is only going to get worse until our politicos start taking it seriously. Justin got a lot of friendly press when he announced the "National Housing Strategy- a place to call home" initiative a couple of years ago. He even bragged it up on the campaign trail last fall, reminding us that it was he, Justin, who brought us the National Housing Strategy.
Unfortunately, the initiatives this initiative has put forward thus far, have only served to boost the demand side of the supply and demand equation. The number of new housing units produced by Trudeau's "National Housing Strategy" is... zero.
None!
If you're inviting in a million new residents every year, and putting up only two hundred thousand new builds, demand will obviously outstrip supply. As it has been doing for many years.
The complete lack of a comprehensive housing policy has been a bonanza for the REIT crowd. I'm old enough to remember when Bill Player and Lenny Rosenberg went to jail for flipping those apartment buildings to imaginary Saudi investors for what, $25,000 per unit?
Those same buildings are now changing hands at $250,000 per unit, and the REITs are the buyers. Why? Because they know that there's no threat on the supply side.
If nothing else, I think Bill and Lenny should have their criminal records expunged.
They weren't crooks, they were just ahead of their time.
They were real estate magicians.
Look who is in the White House today; a real estate magician.
And here's a real head-fuck; all that stuff trading at $250 per square foot today was built in the sixties and seventies at ten to fifteen bucks a foot.
That's what happens when housing becomes just another commodity to be traded amongst the wheeler-dealers.
But let's get back to breakfast.
My pinko pal was telling me that his daughter is living happily in a new-build rental put up by Barry's Construction. It's a for-profit rental built with no government subsidies that I'm aware of.
Here's the thing about Barry; he's a Christian who takes his faith seriously. Barry owns a lot of downtown storefronts, and a standard clause in his lease agreements is that nobody who rents a storefront from him is gonna be open on Sunday.
That's remarkable! Visit downtown St. Jacobs on a Sunday. Everything is open! It's their busiest day of the week, and pretty much the whole she-bang is owned by Mennonite Christians!
Barry is obviously one of those outliers who puts faith over profit. He could max out the rent on his new builds. He could get more for his storefronts if he let them open on Sunday.
But he doesn't.
We need more people like that.
That's a crisis that's been brewing for decades, and is only going to get worse until our politicos start taking it seriously. Justin got a lot of friendly press when he announced the "National Housing Strategy- a place to call home" initiative a couple of years ago. He even bragged it up on the campaign trail last fall, reminding us that it was he, Justin, who brought us the National Housing Strategy.
Unfortunately, the initiatives this initiative has put forward thus far, have only served to boost the demand side of the supply and demand equation. The number of new housing units produced by Trudeau's "National Housing Strategy" is... zero.
None!
If you're inviting in a million new residents every year, and putting up only two hundred thousand new builds, demand will obviously outstrip supply. As it has been doing for many years.
The complete lack of a comprehensive housing policy has been a bonanza for the REIT crowd. I'm old enough to remember when Bill Player and Lenny Rosenberg went to jail for flipping those apartment buildings to imaginary Saudi investors for what, $25,000 per unit?
Those same buildings are now changing hands at $250,000 per unit, and the REITs are the buyers. Why? Because they know that there's no threat on the supply side.
If nothing else, I think Bill and Lenny should have their criminal records expunged.
They weren't crooks, they were just ahead of their time.
They were real estate magicians.
Look who is in the White House today; a real estate magician.
And here's a real head-fuck; all that stuff trading at $250 per square foot today was built in the sixties and seventies at ten to fifteen bucks a foot.
That's what happens when housing becomes just another commodity to be traded amongst the wheeler-dealers.
But let's get back to breakfast.
My pinko pal was telling me that his daughter is living happily in a new-build rental put up by Barry's Construction. It's a for-profit rental built with no government subsidies that I'm aware of.
Here's the thing about Barry; he's a Christian who takes his faith seriously. Barry owns a lot of downtown storefronts, and a standard clause in his lease agreements is that nobody who rents a storefront from him is gonna be open on Sunday.
That's remarkable! Visit downtown St. Jacobs on a Sunday. Everything is open! It's their busiest day of the week, and pretty much the whole she-bang is owned by Mennonite Christians!
Barry is obviously one of those outliers who puts faith over profit. He could max out the rent on his new builds. He could get more for his storefronts if he let them open on Sunday.
But he doesn't.
We need more people like that.
Wednesday, November 20, 2019
Impeachment in the age of Cognitive Dissonance
Just in the past couple of days, the government of the United States has declared its support for the anti-China protests in China's Hong Kong, upended the global consensus on Israel's illegal settlement of Palestinian lands, and recognized the un-elected Anez as legitimate leader of Bolivia.
Meanwhile, we're treated to this impeachment circus, which is predicated on the fantasy that the US does not interfere in the affairs of other countries.
No country on earth does more behind-the-scenes arm-twisting, brow-beating, bribery, and extortion than does the US of A.
And that's just behind the scenes.
They don't mind destroying entire societies on centre stage, in full view of the entire world, on the flimsiest of fraudulent pretexts.
See "shock and awe" for example.
The "Deep State" isn't all that deep. It's certainly not hidden from public view. The National Endowment for Democracy has a readily accessible website and issues reasonably transparent annual reports. They're proud to brag about where they're interfering!
But, we're supposed to believe that Trump did something out of the ordinary when he was strong-arming Zelensky?
Get outta here!
The narrative being spun out of the impeachment hearings beggars belief.
Joe Biden was America's point man for cleaning up corruption in Ukraine. That any country on the planet would need Washington's help in fighting corruption is a laughable proposition on the face of it, and of course another coarse example of brazen Yankee Doodle diddling in the affairs of a sovereign state.
While Joe was busy with that file, his boy Hunter coincidentally got a $50,000/month sinecure at one of Ukraine's most illustriously corrupt corporations. Hunter speaks neither Ukrainian nor Russian and has no qualifications to do anything whatsoever in Ukraine, save one.
His dear daddy was VP of the USA at the time.
If that doesn't stink, your sniffer ain't working.
Meanwhile, we're treated to this impeachment circus, which is predicated on the fantasy that the US does not interfere in the affairs of other countries.
No country on earth does more behind-the-scenes arm-twisting, brow-beating, bribery, and extortion than does the US of A.
And that's just behind the scenes.
They don't mind destroying entire societies on centre stage, in full view of the entire world, on the flimsiest of fraudulent pretexts.
See "shock and awe" for example.
The "Deep State" isn't all that deep. It's certainly not hidden from public view. The National Endowment for Democracy has a readily accessible website and issues reasonably transparent annual reports. They're proud to brag about where they're interfering!
But, we're supposed to believe that Trump did something out of the ordinary when he was strong-arming Zelensky?
Get outta here!
The narrative being spun out of the impeachment hearings beggars belief.
Joe Biden was America's point man for cleaning up corruption in Ukraine. That any country on the planet would need Washington's help in fighting corruption is a laughable proposition on the face of it, and of course another coarse example of brazen Yankee Doodle diddling in the affairs of a sovereign state.
While Joe was busy with that file, his boy Hunter coincidentally got a $50,000/month sinecure at one of Ukraine's most illustriously corrupt corporations. Hunter speaks neither Ukrainian nor Russian and has no qualifications to do anything whatsoever in Ukraine, save one.
His dear daddy was VP of the USA at the time.
If that doesn't stink, your sniffer ain't working.
What would Don Cherry say?
Chrystia Freeland is out as FM, or "Minister of Global Affairs." She can thank her gaffe-prone handling of the NAFTA file and her ludicrous championing of the "Lima Group," that hodge-podge of neo-fascist Latin American states clamouring to depose the democratically elected Maduro in Venezuela. (Why? Because Uncle Sam said so...)
Mike Babcock is out as Minister of Maple Leafs. He can thank his gaffe-prone handling of Canada's Team, although to be fair, he's something of the fall guy here. The real culprits remain secure in their corner office suites at Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment HQ.
You gotta wonder what Don Cherry would say...
Mike Babcock is out as Minister of Maple Leafs. He can thank his gaffe-prone handling of Canada's Team, although to be fair, he's something of the fall guy here. The real culprits remain secure in their corner office suites at Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment HQ.
You gotta wonder what Don Cherry would say...
Tuesday, November 19, 2019
There's a mouse living in my Toyota
I shit you not! There's a f@cking mouse living in my Toyota, and it's not some 20 year old beater nicknamed "Rusty.
How does a mouse even get in your car?
Do they lurk in the grass, and leap in when you open the door?
If not, they must climb up a tire, navigate the various suspension parts, and then tunnel their way into the cabin.
I only became aware of my unwanted tenant because of a trip to Mill Creek Chocolates last week. I bought a dozen individually wrapped chocolates as a gift, and stuck them in the side-pocket of the door. When I reached for them the next day, the Mill Creek bag was there but the chocolates weren't.
I assumed somebody had broke into the car, (they can do this in about two seconds with these new and improved electronic door locks), filched the chocolates, and buggered off... they didn't even bother taking my wallet!
Although that scenario seems suspect in hindsight, it felt 100% plausible at the time.
I even shared that yarn with the folks at Mill Creek when I went back to repurchase my order.
The next day, I'm fishing around under the passenger seat for a carton of smokes I keep stashed there.
Four of the packs had been breached, and a couple of them actually had individual cigarettes pulled out of them...
That ain't no hit-and-run thief!
I hustled off to Home Hardware and bought myself an old-school mouse-trap. Fixed it up with a generous chunk 'o extra-old white cheddar, and set it on the floor mat right in front of me.
Next morning, nothing. Maybe Mr. Mouse was dead, OD'd on chocolate and tobacco. Not necessarily an unpleasant demise, if you stop and ponder it, but it made for a somewhat anxiety-inducing drive into town to fetch my morning paper.
I guess he was just comatose from his OD, because the next morning there was a nice plump rodent in the trap.
The cheese was gone, though, so at least he'd had a decent last meal.
How does a mouse even get in your car?
Do they lurk in the grass, and leap in when you open the door?
If not, they must climb up a tire, navigate the various suspension parts, and then tunnel their way into the cabin.
I only became aware of my unwanted tenant because of a trip to Mill Creek Chocolates last week. I bought a dozen individually wrapped chocolates as a gift, and stuck them in the side-pocket of the door. When I reached for them the next day, the Mill Creek bag was there but the chocolates weren't.
I assumed somebody had broke into the car, (they can do this in about two seconds with these new and improved electronic door locks), filched the chocolates, and buggered off... they didn't even bother taking my wallet!
Although that scenario seems suspect in hindsight, it felt 100% plausible at the time.
I even shared that yarn with the folks at Mill Creek when I went back to repurchase my order.
The next day, I'm fishing around under the passenger seat for a carton of smokes I keep stashed there.
Four of the packs had been breached, and a couple of them actually had individual cigarettes pulled out of them...
That ain't no hit-and-run thief!
I hustled off to Home Hardware and bought myself an old-school mouse-trap. Fixed it up with a generous chunk 'o extra-old white cheddar, and set it on the floor mat right in front of me.
Next morning, nothing. Maybe Mr. Mouse was dead, OD'd on chocolate and tobacco. Not necessarily an unpleasant demise, if you stop and ponder it, but it made for a somewhat anxiety-inducing drive into town to fetch my morning paper.
I guess he was just comatose from his OD, because the next morning there was a nice plump rodent in the trap.
The cheese was gone, though, so at least he'd had a decent last meal.
Realities of Trudeau's minority government visible
Check this out; Canada reverses UN stance on Palestinians in break with US over settlements.
The headline is somewhat misleading. While our record on standing up for the rights of Palestinians is indeed shameful, we've at least consistently paid lip service to international law. When Pompeo officially side-lined international law the other day, by proclaiming that the settlement project was hunky-dory, I would have thought we'd be me-tooing that one right smartly.
That would have been "reversing our stance..."
But instead, Justin's crew suddenly found the backbone to disagree with our bully neighbour to the south.
And thank God Chrystia Freeland is out of the picture. Looks like Jagmeet made my wish come true!
Maybe that'll dial down the gratuitous Putin-bashing we constantly hear out of Ottawa. I hope so. Canada is actually stuck between Russia and the only "super-power" in the world, which, as it happens, is determined to subjugate Russia by hook or by crook.
Wouldn't it be in our interests to have good relations with both of our most immediate neighbours?
The headline is somewhat misleading. While our record on standing up for the rights of Palestinians is indeed shameful, we've at least consistently paid lip service to international law. When Pompeo officially side-lined international law the other day, by proclaiming that the settlement project was hunky-dory, I would have thought we'd be me-tooing that one right smartly.
That would have been "reversing our stance..."
But instead, Justin's crew suddenly found the backbone to disagree with our bully neighbour to the south.
And thank God Chrystia Freeland is out of the picture. Looks like Jagmeet made my wish come true!
Maybe that'll dial down the gratuitous Putin-bashing we constantly hear out of Ottawa. I hope so. Canada is actually stuck between Russia and the only "super-power" in the world, which, as it happens, is determined to subjugate Russia by hook or by crook.
Wouldn't it be in our interests to have good relations with both of our most immediate neighbours?
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